Tucker Carlson

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (born May 16, 1969) is an American conservative political commentator, reporter, author and columnist. He hosted the nightly political talk show Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News from 2016 to 2023. Since his contract with Fox News was terminated, he has hosted Tucker on the X social network.

1990s

 * Children born with Down Syndrome are not vegetables, nor are their lives demonstrably not worth living.
 * Writing for The Weekly Standard in December 1996;


 * [Grover] Norquist is a mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep . . . an embarrassing anomaly, the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home . . . [He] is repulsive, granted, but there aren't nearly enough of him to start a purge trial.
 * Writing for Slate magazine;


 * I thought I'd be ragged for writing a puffy piece. My wife said people are going to think you're hunting for a job in the Bush campaign.
 * Expressing surprise after conservatives signalled their disapproval of his seemingly unflattering portrayal of George W. Bush in an interview for Talk magazine on August 12, 1999;


 * The wonderful thing is we're allowed to say what we think . . . Your stories can be more true, more honest, more direct. If a person at a press conference says something I think is ludicrous, I get to say it's ludicrous . . . You try not to distort the truth because someone you're profiling you think is on the right side of abortion or trade or any other issue. That would be dishonest.
 * Expressing his fondness for opinionated journalism;


 * I have a lot of trouble writing or doing anything unless the pressure is on . . . If left to my own devices, I'd spend a lot of time playing with my kids and my dogs.
 * Divulging his habit of procrastination;

2000s



 * It's a good thing Al Gore has an unappealing demeanor, or George W. Bush would be in real trouble. Bush delivered a mediocre performance at the first presidential debate in Boston. For the first half an hour he appeared nervous. Several times he seemed to lose his train of thought in mid-sentence. Though he relaxed as the night progressed, his remarks often lacked focus. He left Gore's endless attacks on the "wealthiest one percent of Americans" essentially unchallenged. He offered no defense of his own pro-life views, allowing Gore, a genuine extremist on abortion, to sound like the candidate with the mainstream position. He even let Gore interrupt him, repeatedly. Bush was not impressive. Happily for Republicans, Gore was far worse. If George W. Bush is elected president, it will be to a great extent because millions of undecided voters entered the voting booth, considered the phrase "President Gore," and shuddered.
 * Delivering remarks on the first presidential debate of the 2000 presidential election;


 * Racial solidarity wasn't a working concept in my southern-California hometown. Most people barely had last names, much less ethnic identities. I grew up feeling about as much connection to nineteenth-century slave owners as I did to bus drivers in Helsinki or astronomers in Tirana. We're all capable of getting sunburned. That's it.
 * Writing on his expedition to Liberia with Dr. Cornel West, the Reverends Al Sharpton and Al Sampson and members of the Nation of Islam to speak with the LURD;


 * Most of the time you can beat a woman in an argument. But what do you win? Nothing. You get short-term pleasure followed by a lot of pain.
 * Opining in an interview with Elle magazine;


 * I think it’s a total nightmare and disaster, and I’m ashamed that I went against my own instincts in supporting [the Iraq War]. It’s something I’ll never do again. Never. I got convinced by a friend of mine who’s smarter than I am, and I shouldn’t have done that. No. I want things to work out, but I’m enraged by it, actually.
 * Expressing his regret for initially supporting the Iraq War;


 * But the real story here is an 85-year-old grandmother is attempting to start a class action suit, a frivolous lawsuit, against this video game manufacturer. I thought the elderly were immune from embarrassing behavior like starting frivolous class action lawsuits but they’re not, are they?
 * [T]he idea that if you buy some creepy video game for your grandson knowing it’s a creepy video game, it turns out to be even creepier than you thought, then you’re owed thousands by the people who made it? Ah, no!
 * On the Hot Coffee modification controversy surrounding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas;


 * Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York . . . Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he’s nice but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada.
 * It only eggs them on. Canada is essentially a stalker, stalking the United States, right? Canada has little pictures of us in its bedroom, right?
 * Criticizing the Liberal government of Canada under former Prime Minister Paul Martin;

Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites

 * Politics deserves more color. The legislative process needs more people like Don Young. Young, the Republican congressman from Alaska, once used a walrus penis bone as a prop during a congressional hearing. As Mollie Beatty, then the director of the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, spoke about the need to protect endangered species from hunting, Young angrily slapped the eighteen-inch bone against his hand.


 * It was Jack Oliver, the deputy finance chairman of the Bush campaign. He was upset—so upset, I couldn't make out his words at first. "You fucked us!" he yelled. "I can't believe you did that. We gave you all this access, and you fucked us in return." Bush hadn't liked the piece at all. In fact, I later heard from someone who was with him at the time, he was wounded by it.


 * I had just gotten off the Crossfire set when one of our producers handed me a stack of mail. On the way to the elevator, I glanced at it. On top of the pile was a registered letter from a law firm. It got my attention immediately. I've never had a pleasant letter from a lawyer. This one was worse than most. It was written by an attorney in Indiana named Paul M. Blanton. Blanton wanted to let me know that his client, a woman named Kimberly Carter, was planning to file criminal sex charges against me in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. "Ms. Carter has informed me that she was raped by you," Blanton wrote. "If you should have any questions or concerns about any of the aforementioned, please do not hesitate to contact me." Should I have any questions or concerns? I didn't know where to begin. Rape? Kentucky? Criminal charges? I knew I hadn't raped anyone. I didn't think I'd ever even been to Kentucky.


 * Nuts or not, Kimberly Carter had a lot of chutzpah. Six months later, she wrote me again. This time she sent a clock radio with my name on it, along with a note apologizing "for the misunderstanding." A few months after that I got an Easter card from "Your Biggest Fan!" Her next card had five exclamation points, which I took as a sign of escalating mania.

Excerpts from appearances on Bubba the Love Sponge

 * Carlson: I think they are. On the other hand, you know, the bottom line is the issue of security — who's going to protect the country against, you know, the Muslim lunatics who want to hurt us — is the only thing the Republicans have left. They can't claim that they're, you know, the party of fiscal restraint anymore. They're big spenders, and that's obvious. But that one argument, “Vote for us, we'll protect you,” that still works, because on — you know, let's be totally real. Nancy Pelosi's going to keep you safe while you sleep? I don't think so. She's not.
 * Bubba the Love Sponge: So — so, now listen, can the Democrats not — in the nine, or 10, or eight, or however many months there is — can they not regroup or get a strategy going with, "Listen, we need to — the only thing that these Republicans have is to keep you guys safe." Can they not, you know, responsibly come up with some type of game plan where they can make us feel — make people feel safe as well?
 * Carlson: I think if they're — Oh, they could, absolutely. If there were a Democrat to come out in the 2008 election and say, “You know what the problem is? It’s Islamic extremism. It's not terror, it's not some, you know, indefinable threat out there. It's these lunatic Muslims who are behaving like animals, and I'm going to kill as many of them as I can if you elect me.” If a Democrat were to say that, he would be elected king, OK?
 * Suggesting the key to electoral victory at that time was addressing Islamic extremism (March 21, 2006);


 * Bubba: Let's get into a couple things. One, this whole Duke issue. I mean, is this not, honest to God, Tucker, in my opinion, and tell me what you think, I think these guys are innocent.
 * Carlson: Well, I think they could get railroaded. I mean, you know, look, here's the bottom line. And I said this the other day and there was all this outrage and, “How could you say that,” but I mean, this woman sells sex for a living. OK? I'm not attacking that — I'm merely noting it. She sells sex for a living. If she's accusing other people of nonconsensual sex, it's a little more complicated than if some, you know, housewife claims she was pulled off the street and raped. It's just not the same thing. It's harder to determine what's consensual and what's not. And to act like, you know, these guys absolutely did it because she's this oppressed stripper, pardon me, adult dancer or exotic dancer, whatever the hell they're calling her, is ridiculous. I mean, these kids, maybe they did do something wrong, I don't know. But, I mean, you got to give them the benefit of the doubt.
 * Discussing the Duke lacrosse case, which saw three men cleared of false rape accusations (April 8, 2006);


 * Co-Host: Alexa Stewart, we run into her all the time.
 * Carlson: She seems like a — she seems awful —
 * Bubba: Cunt.
 * Co-Host: Yeah, she is awful.
 * Bubba: They're very cunty.
 * Carlson: She seems extremely cunty.
 * Bubba: I like to hear that word, oh yeah — I stepped over him. She seems what now? Go ahead.
 * Carlson: She just does seem a little cunty. I mean you said it; I'm just agreeing with you. I don't use that word because it's offensive —
 * Bubba: Right. I'd love for Tucker Carlson. Tonight on MSNBC a girl that comes across kind of cunty.
 * Carlson: Well she does. I mean, I heard — I mean, now I'm a Brent fan, so, I'm just stating my bias right out front here. I heard her on with him and I just wanted to give her the spanking she so desperately needs.
 * Discussing Alexa Stewart, daughter of Martha Stewart (May 2, 2006);


 * Carlson: By the way, women hate you when they do you wrong and you put up with it.
 * Co-Host: Exactly.
 * Carlson: Because they hate weakness. They're like dogs that way. They can smell it on you, and they have contempt for it; they’ll bite you.


 * Carlson: I mean, I love women, but they're extremely primitive, they're basic, they're not that hard to understand. And one of the things they hate more than anything is weakness in a man.
 * Discussing women (October 30, 2007); ;


 * Bubba: Bill Clinton is a real man, and Bill Clinton could give a fuck whether Hillary wins or loses. He's just playing the role right now. He's trying to get some whores. He doesn't give a fuck about that battle-ax. He's trying to keep her busy right now.
 * Carlson: But he can [sic] laid anytime he wants.
 * Bubba: Oh, right.
 * Carlson: Why doesn't he divorce her and, you know, take up plural marriage or something with a bunch of teenagers in a foreign country.
 * Bubba: He's saying, “Oh, wait, I don't want her to drop out early, because that means she has to get off the campaign trail. Fuck that. I need to keep her going."
 * Discussing the marriage between Bill and Hillary Clinton (January 8, 2008);


 * Carlson: I've seen a lot more of the typical — and I mean this — typical whining from a Black politician about how, "You don't like me because I'm Black." Using racism as a defense, right? I catch you doing something bad, "Well, oh, you're a racist." That is something that I have covered up close and personal my entire adult life for 17 years being around Black politicians saying that exact thing. The Congressional Black Caucus exists to blame the white man for everything, and I'm happy to say that in public because it's true. Everyone knows it's true.
 * Stating black politicians often use their race as a cover on August 5, 2008;


 * Carlson: I still can't get over, you know, Obama saying, "They're going to attack me because I'm Black." I mean, that's just ridiculous. I mean, that is so low to say something like that.
 * Co-Host: Well, see, Tucker, here's the —
 * Carlson: Everybody knows that Barack Obama would still be in the state Senate in Illinois if he were white.
 * Discussing Barack Obama and suggesting his race aided him to become the Democrat's presidential candidate (August 5, 2008);


 * Carlson: I don't like the feminist crap. I hate that and that's one of the reasons I despise the Democrats because they're always rolling that crap out. "Well, you don't like him because he's Black. You don't like her because she's a woman." Oh, shut the fuck up.
 * Bubba: But go ahead, Spice.
 * Co-Host: Hang on, Tuck. So you're telling me that this choice of him choosing Sarah was a better choice than a Romney?
 * Carlson: Yes, definitely.
 * Co-Host: I just can't see it.
 * Carlson: I feel like a more risky choice, needless to say, but don't think Rom — you get anything out of Romney, I really don't.




 * Carlson: Look, everybody is so intimidated by, you know, the Democratic Party and those whackies in the media on this race and gender nonsense. The country's so fucked up on the subject that getting a white man, I mean everyone's embarrassed to be a white man I guess, that's a bad thing.
 * Bubba: No, I love being a white man. It kicks ass, my friend. I love it.
 * Carlson: I don't have a problem with it. I don't really think of the world in those terms but, you know, white men, you know, they've contributed some, I would say.
 * Co-Host: Well, quite a lot.
 * Bubba: Tucker's high on pills.
 * Carlson: Well, I mean creating civilization and stuff, I think they've done a pretty — I don't know, whatever! I just don't like to think of the world in those terms but —
 * Bubba: How many pieces of Nicorette has he had today?
 * Carlson: A lot of people would rather see the world in those terms and a lot of people in politics do, and now the Republicans do even more and I just disapprove.
 * Discussing race and gender in the eyes of the two main political parties (September 3, 2008);


 * Bubba: Fine people of Canada, please understand that Tucker is a very good friend of mine, but I in no way, shape, or form share his views of how he feels about people from Canada. I love Canada. They're great people up there. Tucker feels that you guys are a bunch of assholes.
 * Carlson: I totally disagree. If I didn't like Canada, I wouldn’t consider it worth invading. I mean, Iraq is a crappy place filled with a bunch of, you know, semiliterate primitive monkeys — that’s why it wasn't worth invading.
 * Bubba: Keep burying yourself.
 * Carlson: But Canada's a solid place with good-looking women and good fishing. We should invade.
 * Jokingly suggesting invading Canada over Iraq on October 7, 2008;


 * Carlson: Well, actually, he's not in prison for that. He didn’t — Warren Jeffs didn't marry underaged girls, actually.
 * Co-Host: No, he's in prison for facilitation of child rape.
 * Carlson: Whatever the hell that means.
 * Co-Host: That means that —
 * Carlson: He's in prison because he's weird and unpopular and he has a different lifestyle that other people find creepy.
 * Co-Host:: No, he is an accessory to the rape of children. That is a felony and a serious one at that.
 * Carlson: What do you mean an accessory? He's like got some weird religious cult where he thinks it's OK to, you know, marry underaged girls, but he didn't do it. Why wouldn't the guy who actually did it, who had sex with an underaged girl, he should be the one who's doing life.




 * Carlson: He's not accused of touching anybody; he is accused of facilitating a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old man. That's the accusation. That's what they're calling felony rape. [crosstalk] That's bullshit. I'm sorry. Now this guy may be… a child rapist. I'm just telling you that arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old and a 27-year-old is not the same as pulling a stranger off the street and raping her. That’s bullshit




 * Carlson: All of a sudden, like we're very skeptical about everything until like some prosecutor comes out and says, "This guy's bad" and the rest of us nod in agreement like a church choir, "Yeah, he's bad." How do we know he’s bad? What do we know exactly? Nothing… I should make the laws round here, and Michael Vick would have been executed, and Warren Jeffs would be out on the street.
 * Bubba: The governor of Arizona, right now. That's the problem. We'd all be --
 * Co-Host: Dog killing, bad. Child rape, eh, not so much.
 * Bubba: Yeah, dog killing, really bad.
 * Carlson: — child rape. I'm not for child rape. I'm just saying, if you mistreat dogs like that, we're going to have to execute you.
 * Defending Morman fundamentalist and polygamist, Warren Jeffs (then on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" list), and lambasting Michael Vick, who had orchestrated a dog fighting ring, on August 27, 2009;

2016

 * Let that sink in. Conservative voters are being scolded for supporting a candidate they consider conservative because it would be bad for conservatism? And by the way, the people doing the scolding? They’re the ones who’ve been advocating for open borders, and nation-building in countries whose populations hate us, and trade deals that eliminated jobs while enriching their donors, all while implicitly mocking the base for its worries about abortion and gay marriage and the pace of demographic change. Now they’re telling their voters to shut up and obey, and if they don’t, they’re liberal.
 * When was the last time you stopped yourself from saying something you believed to be true for fear of being punished or criticized for saying it? If you live in America, it probably hasn’t been long.
 * A temporary ban on Muslim immigration? That sounds a little extreme (meaning nobody else has said it recently in public). But is it? Millions of Muslims have moved to Western Europe over the past 50 years, and a sizable number of them still haven’t assimilated. Instead, they remain hostile and sometimes dangerous to the cultures that welcomed them. By any measure, that experiment has failed.
 * Writing for Politico regarding the rise of Donald Trump;

2017

 * Let me just stipulate. I am for getting along. I am for colorblindness, I’m for tolerance, 100%. But I also think that if things radically change in your country, it’s okay for you to say, what is this, and maybe I don’t want to live in a country that looks nothing like the country I grew up in. Is that bigoted?
 * On his view on demographic change in an interview with Jorge Ramos (March 7, 2017)


 * Totally bizarre situation—which I never talk about, because it was actually not really part of my life at all.
 * On his biological mother, who left Carlson when he was 6 years old;


 * It’s going to confuse the living shit out of our viewers . . . When’s the last time you saw someone defend Iran on Fox News? Right around never?
 * On his preference for closer diplomatic ties with Iran conflicting with the views of most of his viewership;


 * That is not actually what is illegal as far as I understand. What I understand is the removal of an entire portion of the female sex organ without the consent of the child. Now you underwent this as an adult, there is a quantum difference between making a decision to do something like that and having that decision made for you, that cannot be reversed, as a child. That seems to me, probably the worst thing you could do to a child. Would you concede, because there are a lot of women who feel mutilated by this .. this is not, y'know .. this is being lead by women .. that maybe we should let adults make this decision and not impose it on six year olds .. is that fair?
 * 3 May 2017 discussion and followup with anthropologist Fuambai Ahmadu

2018

 * Hazleton's population was 2 percent Hispanic. Just 16 years later, Hazleton is majority Hispanic. This is more change than human beings are designed to digest. This pace of change makes societies volatile, really volatile, just as ours has become volatile. That's happening all over the country. No nation, no society has ever changed this much, this fast. Now before you start calling anyone bigoted, consider and be honest: how would you feel if that happened in your neighborhood?
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on March 20, 2018; ; ;


 * This was mid-October 2001. I’d gone to Pakistan for New York magazine to cover the Taliban. I was flying from Islamabad to Peshawar, on the Afghan border, to Dubai. It was right after 9/11, so everyone was paranoid about air travel. I was sitting in first class on a big Airbus, and everyone was chain-smoking Marlboros. There were clouds of cigarette smoke, but no alcohol was allowed. We stop in Peshawar, and all these randoms file in and sit on the floor of the cockpit and smoke cigarettes. It made me nervous. This was not a First World thing to do. So we took off again, and because of the bombings in Afghanistan, we had to fly the long way around, over Iran. It ended up being a four-hour flight. Around two in the morning, we’re starting to descend. All of a sudden, bam, the plane just stops . . . And then the plane starts to drop. The engines rev and the plane turns sideways. It’s clear we’re crashing, no doubt about it. People are screaming. We finally touch down and bounce right off the runway. The right wing snaps off and all these sparks are coming up. Everyone knows we’re going to die . . . You’d think in the face of imminent death you’d be like, This is happening, it’s inevitable, and I’m peaceful about it. I was not peaceful at all. So the plane goes into a sand dune and ends up on its side. I was the first person off. I kicked open the door, the slide came down, I ran into the darkness and immediately got picked up by guards. I was brought to a room, locked in there and then put on a British Airways flight eight hours later.
 * Recounting the time he was involved in a plane crash in October 2001 in an interview with Playboy on October 25, 2018;


 * You know, the funny thing about that, and one of the reasons I’ve never talked about it, is there’s no winning. Either you lie and say, “I’m so wounded by that.” Or you tell the truth and sound like a sociopath. In my case, the truth is my childhood wasn’t that bad. It was actually pretty fun. I love my dad. Losing my mom was sad, I guess. My parents got divorced because my mom was a nutcase. Boo-hoo, poor me. But my dad got remarried to a wonderful woman, my stepmom, whom I love. I always worried I was suppressing all this rage. I used to say to my girlfriend, now wife, “What am I going to do if she ever reappears?” Then I actually did get the call, and it turned out she was living in remote France, in the Pyrénées mountains, working as a sculptor . . . [My aunt] called me and said, “Your mother’s dying.” That didn’t even make sense to me. “My mother? Who’s my mother?” And she said, “Your mother. You know, my sister.” . . . “She’s dying and she’s going to be gone soon. You’ve got to go visit her.” I thought about it, and I said, “No, I don’t think I do.”
 * On his mother and being told her whereabouts for the first time after she left him in 1976 in an interview with Playboy on October 25, 2018;


 * It’s obvious we need more scientists and skilled engineers. What we’re getting instead are waves of poor people with a high school education or less. They’re nice people; nobody doubts that. But as an economic matter, this is insane. It’s indefensible, so nobody tries to defend it. It’s indefensible, so no one even tries to defend it. Instead, our leaders demand you shut up and accept it. We’ve got a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, dirtier and more divided. Immigration is a form of atonement. Previous leaders of our country committed sins. So, we must pay for those sins by welcoming an endless chain of migrant caravans.
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on December 13, 2018; ; ; ; ; ; ;

Ship of Fools

 * Trump might be vulgar and ignorant, but he wasn’t responsible for the many disasters America’s leaders created. Trump didn’t invade Iraq or bail out Wall Street. He didn’t lower interest rates to zero, or open the borders, or sit silently by as the manufacturing sector collapsed and the middle class died. You couldn’t really know what Trump might do as president, but he didn’t do any of that.


 * Voters knew from the very beginning exactly who Bill Clinton was. They knew because voters always know. In politics as in life, nothing is really hidden, only ignored. A candidate’s character is transparent . . . Voters understood Clinton's weaknesses. They just didn't care . . . Once he got elected, Clinton seemed to forget he'd won . . . Clinton's new priorities seemed to mirror those of the New York Times editorial page: gun control, global warming, gays in the military. His approval rating tanked. New Gingrich and the Republicans took over Congress in the first midterm election. Clinton quickly learned his lesson. He scurried back to the middle and stayed there for the next six years, through scandal and impeachment. Clinton understood that as long as he stayed connected to the board center of American public opinion, voters would overlook his personal shortcomings . . . That's how democracy works . . . Somehow, Bill Clinton's heirs learned nothing from the experience.


 * Thanks to mass immigration, America has experienced greater demographic change in the last few decades than any other country in history has undergone during peacetime . . . If you grew up in America, suddenly nothing looks the same. Your neighbors are different. So is the landscape and the customs and very often the languages you hear on the street. You may not recognize your own hometown. Human beings aren’t wired for that . . . [W]e are told these changes are entirely good . . . We must celebrate the fact that a nation that was overwhelmingly European, Christian, and English-speaking fifty years ago has become a place with no ethnic majority, immense religious pluralism, and no universally shared culture or language.


 * But is diversity our strength? The less we have in common, the stronger we are? Is that true of families? Is it true in neighborhoods or businesses? Of course not. Then why is it true of America? Nobody knows. Nobody’s even allowed to ask the question.


 * The few sincere liberals left, the ones actually fighting corporate power, seem like bewildered relics from an earlier age. For generations, there was no more famous activist on the left than Ralph Nader . . . If life were fair, Nader would be living out his days in a socialist retirement home in Florida, greeting a parade of awestruck liberal pilgrims. Instead, he's mostly reviled by his former admirers. His crime was daring to run for president in 2000. Democrats blamed him for Al Gore's narrow loss to George W. Bush. They never stopped blaming him. "Ralph Nader Still Refuses to Admit He Elected Bush," read a headline in New York magazine sixteen years after the election.


 * The talentless prosper, rising inexorably toward positions of greater power, and breaking things along the way. It happened to the Ottomans. Max Boot is living proof that it’s happening in America.


 * Even Representative Maxine Waters of Los Angeles, an open black nationalist, doesn’t choose to live around the people she represents. Waters doesn’t live within the bounds of her own district. She lives in a six-thousand-square-foot, $4.3 million spread in Hancock Park, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. How did Waters afford a house that expensive after forty years of working in government? I asked once. She didn’t answer, but did call me a racist.

2019

 * I want to say to you — why don’t you go fuck yourself, you tiny brain — and I hope this gets picked up because you’re a moron, I tried to give you a hearing but you were too fucking annoying.
 * To Dutch historian Rutger Bregman in an unaired segment taped for Tucker Carlson Tonight; ; ; ; ;


 * Why are the people who consider Bill Clinton a hero lecturing me about sexism? How can the party that demands racial quotas denounce other people as racist? After awhile you begin to think that maybe their criticisms aren’t sincere. Maybe their moral puffery is a costume.
 * These are the people who write our movies and our sitcoms, They are not shocked by naughty words. They just pretend to be when it’s useful. It’s been very useful lately.
 * Defending himself against the then-recently released recordings of him on Bubba the Love Sponge on Tucker Carlson Tonight;


 * You’ve got to be honest about what it means to lead a country, it means killing people.
 * Opining in regards to countries such as North Korea on Fox & Friends on June 30, 2019;


 * Ilhan Omar has an awful lot to be grateful for, but she isn't grateful, not at all. After everything America has done for Omar and for her family, she hates this country more than ever . . . Omar isn't disappointed in America, she's enraged by it. Virtually every public statement she makes accuses Americans of bigotry and racism. This is an immoral country, she says. She has undisguised contempt for the United States and for its people. That should worry you, and not just because Omar is now a sitting member of Congress. Ilhan Omar is living proof that the way we practice immigration has become dangerous to this country. A system designed to strengthen America is instead undermining it. Some of the very people we try hardest to help have come to hate us passionately. Maybe that's our fault for asking too little of our immigrants. We aren't self-confident enough to make them assimilate, so they never feel fully American. Or maybe the problem is deeper than that, maybe we are importing people from places whose values are simply antithetical to ours. Who knows what the problem is, but there is a problem, and whatever the cause, this cannot continue. It's not sustainable. No country can import large numbers of people who hate it and expect to survive. The Romans were the last to try that, with predictable results. So, be grateful for Ilhan Omar, annoying as she is. She's a living fire alarm, a warning to the rest of us that we better change our immigration system immediately, or else.
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on July 9, 2019; ; ; ; ;


 * We noted at the beginning of this show that Ilhan Omar is trying to take this show off the air. Shut us up. Silence us. We want to reassure you that’s not going to happen. Why? Because we work at Fox News, and they’ve got our back, and we’re thankful for that.
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on July 10, 2019; ;


 * If you were to assemble a list, a hierarchy of concerns, problems this country has, where would white supremacy be on the list? Right up there with Russia probably. It’s actually not a real problem in America. "White supremacy, that's the problem." This is a hoax, just like the Russia hoax. It's a conspiracy theory used to divide the country and keep a hold on power.
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on August 6, 2019; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;


 * How exactly is diversity our strength?
 * Rhetorically asking on Tucker Carlson Tonight;

2020

 * For a lot of middle class people, wages are not keeping pace with expenses. Child care, housing, education, health care -- they're all getting more expensive by the year. The student loan bubble is still inflating. It's burdening young people with debts so large, they can't start families. Now, these are economic problems, but they require a political solution. The candidate who makes it easier for 30-year-olds to get married and have kids will win the election and will deserve to win. Remember that. It's truer than any economic theory conceived on any college campus in the last hundred years.
 * Issuing a warning that the 2020 election would be more difficult than anticipated;


 * This may be a lot of things, this moment we're living through, but it is definitely not about black lives, and remember that when they come for you, and at this rate, they will.
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on the day of the memorial for George Floyd in Houston on June 8, 2020;


 * Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the voice of the street, actually grew up in an idyllic town 45 miles north of New York City. It’s called Yorktown Heights. You never know it from listening to her recent race-baiting but the population of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez' home is over 90 percent white.
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on July 13, 2020;


 * Millions of Americans sincerely love Donald Trump. They love him in spite of everything they've heard. They love him, often, in spite of himself. They're not deluded. They know exactly who Trump is. They love him anyway. They love Donald Trump because no one else loves them. The country they built, the country their ancestors fought for over hundreds of years, has left them to die in unfashionable little towns, mocked and despised by the sneering halfwits with finance degrees -- but no actual skills -- who seem to run everything all of a sudden. Whatever Donald Trump's faults, he is better than the rest of the people in charge. At least he doesn't hate them for their weakness. Donald Trump, in other words, is and has always been a living indictment of the people who run this country. That was true four years ago when he came out of nowhere to win the presidency. And it's every bit as true right now, maybe even more true than it's ever been. It will remain true regardless of whether Donald Trump wins reelection.
 * On Tucker Carlson Tonight on November 2, 2020; ;


 * What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.
 * "Tucker Carlson’s Dominion Text Messages Are a Thing of Beauty", 5 November 2020


 * [To Sidney Powell, Trump attorney involved in making false claims about the 2020 presidential election result] You keep telling our viewers that millions of votes were changed by the software. I hope you will prove that very soon [...] You've convinced them that Trump will win. If you don't have conclusive evidence of fraud at that scale, it’s a cruel and reckless thing to keep saying.
 * "Defamation suit produced trove of Tucker Carlson messages" AP News (April 24, 2023)
 * Text message (November 17, 2020) revealed during about Donald Trump revealed in Disclosure during the pre-trial of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network.


 * And now Trump, I learned this morning, is sitting back and letting them lose the senate. He doesn’t care. I care. I’ve got four kids and plan to live here.
 * 19 November 2020, quoted in 24 April 2023 article by AP News

2021

 * A couple of weeks ago, I was watching [a] video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It's not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they'd hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I'm sure I'd hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn't gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed. If I don't care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?
 * Text message to a Fox producer (January 7, 2021), as cited in "Carlson's Text That Alarmed Fox Leaders: 'It’s Not How White Men Fight'" The New York Times (May 2, 2023)
 * Officially redacted portion of Exhibit 276 in Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network which is reported to have persuaded the Fox board (they saw it only a day before the case came to court), to settle the case and contributed to the firing of Carlson by Fox.


 * [On Donald Trump] I hate him passionately.
 * [W]e are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights [...] I truly can't wait.”
 * That’s the last four years. We’re all pretending we've got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it's been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.
 * "Tucker Carlson 'passionately' hates Trump, and eight more key revelations about Fox News from new Dominion filings" CNN (March 8, 2023).
 * Text messages (January 4, 2021) about Donald Trump revealed in Disclosure during the pre-trial of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network.


 * What can we learn from this? It’s not enough to call it a tragedy. Imagine, for a second, getting the call and learning that was your daughter. The last time you spoke to her, she was heading to Washington for a political rally. Now, she’s dead. You’ll never talk to her again. Seriously, imagine that. If you have children, it will put you in the right frame of mind.
 * Commenting on the death of Ashli Babbit following the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021; ;


 * Joe Biden is the president of the United States, not a high school debate coach. He controls the largest military and law enforcement agencies in the world. He has now declared war, and we have a right to know, specifically and precisely, who exactly he has declared war on. Innocent people could be hurt in this war. They usually are. There could be collateral damage in this war, and the casualties will be Americans.
 * Questioning what Joe Biden meant when he declared a nationwide war on 'white supremacy' and 'domestic terrorism' in his inaugural address on January 20, 2021; ;


 * Streams of politicians, who just months before had told us that cops were racist by definition, praised Brian Sicknick as a hero. They had finally found a police officer who served their political uses. Just one problem: The story they told was a lie from beginning to end. Officer Sicknick was not beaten to death, with a fire extinguisher or anything else. According to an exhaustive and fascinating new analysis on Revolver News, there's no evidence that Brian Sicknick was hit with a fire extinguisher at any point on Jan 6. The officer's body apparently bore no signs of trauma. In fact, on the night of Jan. 6, long after rioters at the Capitol had been arrested or dispersed, Brian Sicknick texted his brother from his office. According to his brother, Sicknick said he'd been "pepper sprayed twice" but was otherwise "in good shape". Twenty-four hours later, Officer Brian Sicknick was dead.
 * Casting doubt on the initially reported cause of death of Capitol Officer Brian Sicknick in the aftermath of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on February 10, 2021;


 * Beginning on Memorial Day, BLM and their sponsors in corporate America completely changed this country. They changed this country more in 5 months than it had changed in the previous 50 years. How'd they do that? They used the sad death of a man called George Floyd to upend our society. Months later we learned the story they told us about George Floyd's death was an utter lie. There was no physical evidence that George Floyd was murdered by a cop. The autopsy showed that George Floyd almost certainly died of a drug overdose. Fentanyl.
 * Claiming George Floyd died of fentanyl and not of the asphyxiation caused by Minneapolis Officer Derek Chauvin pressing his knee on his neck on February 10, 2021; ;


 * Equality is what allowed Andrew Jackson to rise from a childhood of bitter poverty in the Carolina woods and make it all the way to the White House. Andrew Jackson was tough, smart and energetic. He lived a remarkable life, and America rewarded him for it. That's equality. Equity is the opposite. Equity is what allowed Kamala Harris, the privileged child of two PhDs, to stay privileged and become one of the most powerful people on the planet, despite having achieved nothing impressive or worthwhile over the span of 56 years.
 * Discussing equality versus equity;


 * [T]wo sitting members of the United States Senate announced they oppose the entire foundation of American civil rights law, and then proceed to attack the core principle, the main principle, of our country. Some people on Twitter were shocked by it, but otherwise you’d never really know it happened. But it did happen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii publicly informed the White House that until the Biden administration puts more people they like in powerful jobs, they will refuse to confirm White nominees. ‘I am a no vote on the floor on all non-diversity nominees,’ Duckworth said, out loud, with cameras rolling. ‘I will vote for racial minorities and I will vote for LGBTQ, but anybody else, I’m not voting for.’ .. So here you have two actual U.S. senators announcing in public they will deny jobs to people who have the wrong skin color. That’s not news? Oh yes, it is news, though Mazie Hirono and Tammy Duckworth may not realize it’s news. In their defense, Hirono and Duckworth are well-known as the dimmest politicians in Washington. Neither one could carry a dinner conversation. But not everyone in Congress is stupid or oblivious. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., certainly isn’t. The Senate Majority Leader misses nothing. Chuck Schumer has spent his entire life telling us at high volume that racial discrimination is wrong, which obviously it is. Then, this week, two of his colleagues went on television to demand racial discrimination. What did Chuck Schumer think of that? Schumer didn’t say a word about it. No one in the Democratic Party did.
 * Tucker Carlson Tonight, “Democrats want to deny jobs based on race”, March 24, 2021


 * Now, I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term "replacement," if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that's what's happening, actually.
 * Tucker Carlson Tonight, Every time they import a new voter they dilute citizens power", April 9, 2021


 * Magazine journalism is worth remembering. They're mostly gone now, but for a long time magazines played a significant role in the life of the country. If you wanted to understand what the rest of the world was like, you read magazines.
 * 21 August 2021 in introduction of The Long Slide: Thirty Years in American Journalism seen on his site


 * Only 46 members of the entire U.S. military have died from the coronavirus over the last year and a half. Suicides, by contrast, kill many, many times more
 * "The Military’s COVID Vaccine Mandate Is Sending Tucker Carlson Into Overdrive (SEPTEMBER 23, 2021)


 * Non-white DNA is the quote "source of our strength" ... imagine saying that! This is the language eugenics, it's horrifying. But there's a reason Biden said it. In political terms this policy is called "the great replacement", the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries. They brag about it all the time, but if you dare to say it's happening, they'll scream at you with maximum hysteria. And here you have Joe Biden confirming his motive on tape with a smile on his face.
 * 22 September 2021 regarding Joe Biden's 17 February 2015 quotes


 * The Ideologues are in control, and that is a huge problem for the rest of us. It’s a problem because ideologues have no interest in the lives of actual human beings. Ideologues care only about their theories, about the bright new future they are building. Humans are just speed bumps on the way to utopia.
 * Tucker Carlson Tonight“This is Joe Biden’s main problem” (Nov. 8, 2021)

2022

 * It may be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious, what is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? [...] Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?
 * Tucker Carlson Tonight (February 22, 2022) cited in "Tucker Carlson, downplaying Russia-Ukraine conflict, urges Americans to ask, 'Why do I hate Putin?'" The Washington Post (February 23, 2022)
 * During the build-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.


 * You don't want to live in a country in which moral panics breakout regularly. By the way, moral panics diminish the people engage in them and hurt the people who don’t. They're degrading. They're crazy. They're the opposite of what you want. You want to live in a country where wisdom and restraint and rational behavior and decency determine the outcomes not screaming. So for nearly two years, the shouting has not ended. Hysteria is now the official language of public discourse in the United States. That's not good for anyone except those benefiting from it... Who is benefitting?   Anyone who lies for a living.  The liars have perfect cover.
 * Tucker Carlson explains how moral panics are destroying America, The Post Millennial (March 8, 2022


 * Sexualizing children, mutilating their genitals, do you get off on it?
 * (19 September 2022)


 * In general people's kooky theories don't bother me. You can be a flat earther, a circumcision activist, you can be whatever you want to be. But if you try and take over my power grid on the basis of your ridiculous theories, then we have a right to fight back, no?
 * (29 September 2022)


 * There is no scientific justification for sexually mutilating kids. They are not doing it for a scientifically defensible reason. They are doing it because they believe in a very specific religious ideology.
 * on Tucker Carlson Tonight in "Stop Sexualizing Kids" monologue (21 November 2022)

2023

 * [South Africa is] a country we never talk about because no one wants to admit what’s happened there over the past 29 years.
 * Tucker Carlson Tonight (January 16, 2023), as quoted in "Tucker Carlson sparks fresh outrage by mourning the end of apartheid in South Africa" The Independent (18 January 2023)
 * The segregationist Apartheid system ended in 1994 with Nelson Mandela becoming the first non-white South African President after the first election open to all adults in the country.


 * Probably not the best time to give up your AR-15.
 * Tucker Carlson Tonight (March 30, 2023), cited in ["Tucker Carlson Teases an Insurrection over Trump" The New Republic (March 31, 2023)
 * Following Donald Trump's indictment by a Manhattan Grand Jury for paying hush money to Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

Ukraine, as you may have heard, is led by a man called Zelensky. We can say for a dead certain fact that he was not involved. He couldn't have been; Zelensky is too decent for terrorism. Now you see him on television, and it’s true you might form a different impression. Sweaty and rat-like, a comedian turned oligarch, a persecutor of Christians, a friend of [US investment giant] BlackRock. But don't believe your own eyes. Actually, Mr Zelensky is a very good man... of all the people in the world, our shifty, dead-eyed Ukrainian friend in the tracksuit is uniquely incapable of blowing up a damn. He's literally a living saint, a man in whom there is no sin.
 * On the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam] No one who's paid to cover these things seem to entertain even the possibility it could have been Ukrainians who did it. No chance of that.
 * Who organised those Black Lives Matter riots three years ago? No one's gotten to the bottom of that. What exactly happened on 9/11? Well, it's still classified.
 * From the first edition of Tucker on Twitter (June 6, 2023), cited in "Tucker Carlson calls Ukraine’s Jewish leader 'rat-like' as he launches new Twitter show with pro-Kremlin rant" The Independent (London, June 6, 2023)

Now, in a normal country, this news would qualify as a bombshell the story of the millennium. But in our country, it doesn't.
 * [On the claims of David Grusch and the supposed cover-up by the US government of recovered UFOs and (alleged) absence of reports from some major media outlets] That's what the former intel officer revealed, and it was clear he was telling the truth [...] In other words, UFOs are actually real, and apparently so is extraterrestrial life.
 * From the first edition of Tucker on Twitter (June 6, 2023), cited in "Watch: Tucker Carlson spouts conspiracy theories about 9/11, Ukraine and UFOs in new show" The Telegraph (London, June 7, 2023)


 * Of course, Joe Biden is not a wannabe dictator! Just because he's trying to put the other candidate in prison for the rest of his life for a crime he himself committed, doesn't mean he has a totalitarian impulse, c'mon, that's absurd! It takes a lot more than jailing your political rivals to earn the title ‘wannabe dictator’!
 * Ep.4 – Wannabe Dictator (June 15, 2023)

2024

 * "If you're powerful and wise, you seek to bring stability and order and predictability and peace. That's what a father does in his family. That's what a good CEO does in a company. It's what a good general does."
 * "Ep 210 | Tucker Carlson Takes On Critics of His Interview with Putin | The Glenn Beck Podcast" on The Glenn Beck Program, found on DeepCast (21 February 2024)


 * "The idea that the only things that are real are the things that we can see or measure in a lab, that's insane. That's just dumb."
 * "#414 - Tucker Carlson: Putin, Navalny, Trump, CIA, NSA, War, Politics & Freedom" on Lex Fridman Podcast, found on DeepCast (27 February 2024)

Quotes about Tucker Carlson

 * Alphabetized by surname.
 * A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z

A

 * Tucker Carlson is literally our greatest ally. I don’t believe that he doesn’t hate the Jews.
 * Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, December 18, 2016; ; ; ; ; ; ; ;


 * Tucker Carlson is basically "Daily Stormer: The Show." Other than the language used, he is covering all of our talking points.
 * Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, August 24, 2018; ; ;

B

 * Some people, like me, believe retirement should be partly socialized. Others, such as Tucker Carlson, believe in a purely private system: If you don’t save for your own retirement, your neighbor has no obligation to bail you out. Both arguments have roots in the American spirit: We are at once wonderfully communitarian and intensely individualistic. I felt then – and now – that rather than pretend there is not a major philosophical difference, or that there is one objectively perfect solution, we should debate our policy options vigorously.
 * Paul Begala writing for CNN;


 * As scholars such as Leo Chavez and Otto Santa Ana have shown, threat narratives of replacement, conquest, invasion, and infestation have circulated for well over a century. What is new is how this racist rhetoric is being promulgated by a particularly influential set of forces that includes a white nationalist president, formidable conservative media ecosystem, and an empowered anti-immigrant and alt-right political contingent, often undergirded by a persistent gun culture." Together, this nativist assemblage has taken up the white nationalist rhetoric of the "great replacement"-a conspiracy theory in which white people are being systematically "replaced" by people of color through mass migration (possibly orchestrated by Jews and other "globalists"). Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham in particular characterize white Americans as being "replaced through immigration to the benefit of Democrats"...Asserting that "foreign citizens will be electing our political leaders" and characterizing Democrats as "the party of foreign voters now," Carlson describes Democrats as engaging in "demographic replacement," using a "flood of illegals" to create "a flood of voters for them." Speaking to Fox's disproportionately white and elderly viewers, Carlson has asserted that he is not "against the immigrants" but rather "for the Americans," because "nobody cares about them. It's like, shut up, you're dying, we're gonna replace you."
 * Cristina Beltrán p115 Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy (2020)


 * In recent weeks, Carlson has been pushing a bogus Kremlin claim that Russia had to invade because Ukraine was building bioweapons labs with help from … Hunter Biden. This odious lie might be designed as a "false flag" operation to justify Russia's use of chemical weapons. Yet Carlson, the consummate "useful idiot," continues to peddle this loathsome propaganda under the guise of just asking questions.
 * Maybe he should be a little more concerned about the suffering of [Ukrainian] civilians at Russian hands? But on his show Monday night, he didn't mention the Bucha massacre. The Kremlin is, naturally, delighted with Carlson's support and has made quotations from his dishonest program a mainstay on its television shows and social media feeds.
 * Max Boot "Hey, Tucker Carlson, are you still rooting for Russia over Ukraine?" The Washington Post (April 5, 2022)


 * Another interesting debate among the NatCons is political and economic. Conservatives have lately become expert culture warriors—the whole Tucker Carlson schtick. This schtick demands that you ignore the actual suffering of the world—the transgender kid alone in some suburban high school, the anxiety of a guy who can’t afford health care for his brother, the struggle of a Black man trying to be seen and recognized as a full human being. It’s a cynical game that treats all of life as a play for ratings, a battle for clicks, and this demands constant outrage, white-identity signaling, and the kind of absurd generalizations that Rachel Bovard used to get that room so excited. Conservatives have got the culture-war act down. Trump was a culture-war president with almost no policy arm attached. The question conservatives at the conference were asking was how to move beyond owning the libs to effecting actual change.
 * David Brooks, as quoted in The Terrifying Future of the American Right (18 November 2021), The Atlantic


 * Mr. Carlson misread, mischaracterized me. He’s a good reporter, he just misunderstood about how serious that was. I take the death penalty very seriously. I take each case seriously. I just felt he misjudged me. I think he misinterpreted my feelings. I know he did.
 * George W. Bush, after he was quoted mocking Karla Faye Tucker and using the f-word by Carlson on August 17, 1999;

C

 * He read adult books when he was 6 and 7 years old . . . He read War and Peace when he was a little kid.
 * Dick Carlson, August 17, 1999;

D

 * I do a lot of shows. He is, without question, the fairest and most intelligent interviewer I’ve ever experienced on the conservative side.
 * Lanny Davis, May 5, 2008;


 * God bless Mr. Carlson for focusing on these vital issues.
 * David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, via Twitter (


 * Tucker is RIGHT! White Supremacy is a ZioMedia Conspiracy Theory! The term is itself a lie. Millions of White activists are NOT 'supremacists' We seek NOT to oppress or destroy any race! Human Rights for all - EVEN FOR WHITE PEOPLE! Stop antiWhite racism!
 * David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, via Twitter, August 7, 2019; ;

F

 * The times I’ve been on TV I didn’t find him to be an effective advocate of his viewpoint. I don’t think he does a good job. That’s what his problem is.
 * Barney Frank, May 5, 2008;

G

 * If indeed Carlson was fired in part for workplace misogyny, he will fall into a venerable Fox tradition. The network has a history of tolerating the abuse of women until revelations become too inconvenient, at which point even figures who’d seemed irreplaceable, like Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly, are tossed overboard. Contempt for women was part of Carlson’s brand at Fox News; his infamous “The End of Men” special urged men to tan their testicles to ostensibly increase testosterone and thereby rescue society from collapse. It would be fitting if contempt for women is what finally derailed him.
 * Like Trump, he would find success by catering to people who despised the world that had spurned him. He made revenge into a career.
 * Michelle Goldberg "Tucker Carlson’s Great Replacement" The New York Times (April 24, 2023)
 * Published on the day Carlson left Fox News


 * He has used his platform to push out prejudice. I think it’s disgusting and I don’t think it deserves a place on a major news network....incredibly irresponsible to even make such a statement while we are still burying people who were gunned down by a white supremacist.
 * Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer and national director of the Anti-Defamation League;


 * I would consider Tucker Carlson to be a socialist.
 * Glenn Greenwald, in an interview with The Daily Caller, which Carlson founded;

H



 * Carlson is comfortably familiar. He’s one of us, an entertaining companion at lunch, full of gossip and wit and even ideas. At the same time, over the years, he has become radically unfamiliar. There are not many journalists or other people regarded as public intellectuals who are promoters of Trump and Trumpism, and who share the president’s fluency in insult and indignation. It is the composite nature of Carlson’s character—belonging at once to two divergent worlds—that makes him interesting to fellow journalists in a way that, say, Sean Hannity, with a larger audience and more direct influence with Trump, generally is not. Many colleagues once viewed him as an important voice of the intelligentsia. Many now believe he has joined the dumbgentsia. They wonder, as Columbia Journalism Review put it, “What happened to Tucker Carlson?”


 * Christopher Hitchens: [W]e picked each other's favorite writers we had from the other side, to see whether we could, get the cream of left-right political writing. So I must've picked Tucker.
 * Interviewer: Why?
 * Hitchens: Do you know, I can't remember what the piece is now, and I hope he isn't watching. It's, although this was pre-9/11 it seems like so long ago to me. I'm, I hope Tucker will forgive if I say I don't remember which piece we picked from him.
 * Interviewer: And another book I wanna...
 * Hitchens: But I do remember telling Tucker, I wish he wouldn't give up writing for TV. And I hope he sometimes hears the distant, hollow echo of my voice, "Tucker, don't do that!"
 * Christopher Hitchens in an interview with C-SPAN (September 2, 2007); ;

J
I haven’t watched anything that he’s said
 * I've been amazed and horrified by how many people are frightened of a guy called Tucker Carlson. Has anybody heard of somebody called — has anybody heard of Tucker Carlson? [...] What is it with this guy? All these wonderful Republicans seem somehow intimidated by his — by his perspective.
 * Boris Johnson responding to a question about Russian aggression in Ukraine at an Atlantic Council meeting (February 1, 2023), cited in "Boris Johnson chastises Republicans for their fear of Tucker Carlson" The Washington Post (February 2, 2023)

K

 * He's great at digging up stuff and great at getting people to confide in him and tell him things they later wish they hadn't . . . He's engaging and boyish, and people take a liking to him.
 * Bill Kristol (August 17, 1999);


 * Tucker Carlson began at The Weekly Standard. Tucker Carlson was a great young reporter. He was one of the most gifted 24-year-olds I’ve seen in the 20 years that I edited the magazine. His copy was sort of perfect at age 24. He had always a little touch of Pat Buchananism, I would say, paleo-conservativism. But that’s very different from what he’s become now. I mean, it is close now to racism, white — I mean, I don’t know if it’s racism exactly — but ethno-nationalism of some kind, let’s call it. A combination of dumbing down, as you said earlier, and stirring people’s emotions in a very unhealthy way.
 * Bill Kristol (January 25, 2018);

L

 * Tucker's not one to be plagued with dark nights of the soul . . . He seems to bob along and that's part of his appeal, his perpetual chipperness. The guy can handle more workload than anybody I know.
 * Matt Labash, August 17, 1999;

M

 * From his position in the 8 p.m. slot, Carlson has managed to become one of the most influential voices in conservative politics, often by refusing to adhere to Republican conventional wisdom. Only a few weeks before the Iran flare-up, he delivered a monologue in praise of Elizabeth Warren’s “economic patriotism” plan; in January, he launched an intra-conservative war over the virtues of capitalism with a monologue attacking Mitt Romney, private equity, and conservatives who “worship” the market. He is also perhaps the most reviled talking head in the country thanks to his frequent diatribes against diversity, immigration, and multiculturalism.


 * Although Carlson flirts with white identity politics, particularly on the topic of immigration, his real ideology isn’t white nationalism or even conservatism, at least in the sense that conservatism has come to be defined in America. More than anything, he espouses the Middle American radicalism that John Judis, writing in 2016, identified as the ideological core of Trumpism. Middle American radicals (MARs) are neither fully liberal nor conservative but a blend of the two, mixing populist economics and a hostility to big business with intense nationalism, right-wing positions on race and immigration, and a desire for strong presidential leadership. Their animating idea is that the broad (and implicitly white) middle of American society — those Carlson referred to, in a podcast interview with Ben Shapiro, as people with “100 IQs making 80 grand a year” — is besieged on two sides, by a corrupt elite above it and a grasping underclass below.


 * Tucker and I agree on just about nothing, but he has always been kind to me, and a fun person to fight with. I wish him all the best.
 * Rachel Maddow, in an email to Salon;


 * I think the thing that Tucker gets a knock for — that he doesn’t deserve — is this idea that he’s evolved and changed in some radical new direction. Tucker has always been that guy. He is legitimately that guy. He is not faking it. He comes by his beliefs and his convictions and even his tone of voice quite naturally. He is not putting it on.
 * Rachel Maddow, in an episode of The Interview podcast;


 * Tucker Carlson is attempting to stay the course amid an advertiser exodus from his Fox News program because of his racist commentary. Carlson had been a mouthpiece for white supremacy, and since being promoted to a prime-time slot on Fox, he has elevated fringe “alt-right” grievances into mainstream media.
 * Media Matters for America, December 18, 2018 ; ; ;

N

 * That man's a beast; who else could fill an entire show each night, asking questions that Google could easily answer?
 * Trevor Noah, "Remarks at the 2022 White House Correspondents' Dinner, C-SPAN (30 April 2022)

O



 * When you look at what Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence — very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that we have to be willing to contend with.
 * Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in MSNBC interview quoted here (2023)


 * "I couldn't care less about what this talking inferiority complex has to say, but I do feel for the women and survivors in his life who now see they wouldn't be believed or safe with him...Many survivors of assault don't tell family, friends, etc bc of how they see others treated
 * Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 2021 Tweet quoted here


 * Not gonna lie, it’s kinda fun watching a racist fool like this weeping about my presence in Congress,
 * Ilhan Omar, July 9, 2019, via Twitter; ;

P



 * As much as people are rightly laying responsibility for much of the philosophy and rhetoric that clearly motivated the El Paso killer at the feet of the president, it's important to remember where Trump gets many of his talking points: Fox News. Anyone who has tuned into their evening lineup over the past couple of years knows that the language in the shooter's online screed could have come from the mouths of any number of the network's stars. But the only one who has been spouting the specific ideological mix that motivated the killer is Tucker Carlson.
 * Heather Digby Parton, August 9, 2019, in Salon;


 * Of all the Fox News personalities who harp on immigration, he is the one with the most sophisticated white nationalist ideology. His ideas fall much more in line with the new strain of right-wing "populism" of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon than David Duke (although the latter is a big fan.)
 * Heather Digby Parton, August 9, 2019, in Salon;


 * He has no intellectual understanding of the white supremacist movement. He's simply an old-school racist without any need for an underlying philosophy to justify it.
 * Heather Digby Parton, August 9, 2019, in Salon;


 * One of my recent analyses contains more than 140 examples of when Tucker Carlson has relied on white nationalists and anti-Semitic tropes in his programming. One of the most prominent ways this manifests is an obsession with racial demographics, and how they are changing in the United States. Tucker Carlson is obsessed with "cultural preservation." There is an entire international far-right movement that echoes such sentiments. Carlson is also constantly fear-mongering about immigrants and blaming every possible problem on the individual choices of immigrants, as opposed to systemic institutions that perpetuate poverty and racism and which impact all people in the United States.
 * Madeline Peltz, researcher with Media Matters for America, July 18, 2019


 * Tucker Carlson has built his career over the last decade on the inherent authority which comes with being on television. He can use his platform to mainstream white nationalist or white supremacist talking points and ideas that his audience otherwise would not be privy to. Tucker Carlson has managed to pervert the privilege with comes with being on television into an opportunity to mainstream white nationalism. What Tucker is doing is not abstract. Mainstreaming these talking points puts vulnerable communities under direct threat of physical and material harm. The FBI has documented a rise in hate crimes since Trump's campaign and through to the third year of his presidency. There have been massacres targeting Muslims, black people and Jewish people in churches, mosques and synagogues. There is a real life-and-death consequence from the unfettered white nationalism on Fox News, the No. 1 cable news network in the country.
 * Madeline Peltz, researcher with Media Matters for America, July 18, 2019 ;

R

 * With all due respect to my colleague, Tucker Carlson, what grown man wants to look like he was dressed up by his mother?
 * Ron Reagan, June 30, 2005;

S

 * I know somebody else who‘s fascinating. I grew up with him, knowing him as the fifth Beatle. You know him as Tucker Carlson.
 * Joe Scarborough (August 23, 2005);


 * I'm hearing, it’s shocking to me, that his numbers actually are far outpacing anything Megyn Kelly’s ever done over there at 9 o’clock . . . A lot of people were concerned when Megyn Kelly left that the numbers would go down, but they’ve actually gone up.
 * Joe Scarborough, on the success of Tucker Carlson Tonight;


 * The Republican Party has grown more racially and religiously homogeneous and its politics more dependent on manufacturing threats to the status of white Christians. This is why Trump frequently and falsely implies that Americans were afraid to say "Merry Christmas" before he was elected, and why Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham warn Fox News viewers that nonwhite immigrants are stealing America. For both the Republican Party and conservative media, wielding power and influence depends on making white Americans feel threatened by the growing political influence of those who are different from them.
 * Adam Serwer, The Cruelty is the Point (2021)


 * data about the demographics of COVID-19 victims began to trickle out. On April 7, major outlets began reporting that preliminary data showed that black and Latino Americans were being disproportionately felled by the coronavirus...That night, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced, "It hasn't been the disaster that we feared"...The nationwide death toll that day was just 13,000 people; it now stands above 70,000, a mere month later...Public-health restrictions designed to contain the outbreak were deemed absurd. They seemed, in Carlson's words, "mindless and authoritarian," a "weird kind of arbitrary fascism." To restrict the freedom of white Americans, just because nonwhite Americans are dying, is an egregious violation of the racial contract. (p 235-6)
 * Adam Serwer The Cruelty is the Point (2021)


 * It definitely is not. Bye-bye Tucker Carlson! #BlackLivesMatter.
 * T-Mobile US Chief Executive Officer Mike Sievert via Twitter


 * Our acquaintance, the host of Fox News Tucker Carlson, obviously has his own interests⁠—but lately, more and more often, they're in tune with our own.
 * Olga Skabeyeva, Russian propagandist on Russian state controlled TV, quoted in "Hysterical Putin Pals Claim the Deep State Took Out Tucker Carlson", The Daily Beast (April 25, 2023)


 * I wonder how long it will take before Tucker Carlson is put into prison as a Russian agent.
 * Vladimir Solovyov, Russian propagandist on Russian state controlled TV, quoted in "Hysterical Putin Pals Claim the Deep State Took Out Tucker Carlson", The Daily Beast (25 April 2023).


 * Carlson: I do think you’re more fun on your show. Just my opinion.
 * Jon Stewart: You know what’s interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.
 * Jon Stewart, during his appearance on Crossfire (October 15, 2004);


 * Oprah Winfrey: You caused a media storm by calling Crossfire host Tucker Carlson a dick when you went on his show last year. Do you regret that?
 * Jon Stewart: I regret losing my patience. That's about it. But calling him a dick? Not really. I was calling that guy who was on that show right there a dick—I don't pretend to know Tucker as a person. But I regret going on air as tired as I was and not being more articulate with what I wanted to say.
 * Jon Stewart, reflecting on his Crossfire appearance one year later;

But it's important to remember what Carlson is: nothing more than an outrage machine. What he offers is not political commentary. It's Fox-approved nonsense meant to juice ratings — and it works.
 * Carlson is dangerous because he has a cultlike following who believe his nightly rants. I would love to see the Murdochs put decency above dollars and remove him from the airwaves.
 * Margaret Sullivan "Now is the time to remember what Fox’s own lawyers said about Tucker Carlson" The Washington Post (February 24, 2022)

T

 * It’s true you have better hair than I do, but I get more pussy than you do.
 * Donald Trump, calling Carlson after he mocked his hair on CNN in 2001;

V

 * [The] 'general tenor’ of the show [...] should ... inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not "stating actual facts" about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in "exaggeration" and "nonliteral commentary." ... [G]iven Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer "arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism"’ about the statements he makes.
 * Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil (September 24, 2023) cited in "Hours after a judge describes Tucker Carlson as 'engaging in exaggeration,' Trump highlights his false claims" The Washington Post (September 25, 2023)
 * Judge Vyskocil, of the United States District Court in Manhattan (according to The New York Times (September 24, 2020)) found in favor of Fox News on First Amendment grounds in a suit for defamation filed by Karen McDougal. McDougal had objected to Carlson's statement in an episode of his program in 2018 claiming she had extorted money from Donald Trump over their alleged affair a decade before he became president. The judge's opinion partly depended on arguments presented by the network's lawyers.

W

 * Fox News host Tucker Carlson can congratulate himself for the sentiment coming from the White House. Last week, Carlson apparently decided that the discussion on immigration featured an insufficient amount of racism and hate. So he attacked Omar, who arrived in the United States at the age of 12, for having the temerity to point out that this country doesn’t always live up to its own lofty ideals. Folks who go into the news business dream of leaving a mark . . . As for Carlson, he’s making his mark by inspiring racist tweets.
 * Erik Wemple, media critic, The Washington Post (July 15, 2019);


 * Tucker Carlson and Michael Brendan Dougherty and a lot of Republicans have something in common with Walter Duranty’s clip file and the underplumbed Russian countryside: They’re all full of s—.
 * Kevin D. Williamson, "The Full Duranty: Vladimir Putin’s U.S. admirers are full of it. (14 February 2024), The Dispatch