How Tucker Carlson Became the Prophet of MAGA
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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. When Tucker Carlson was fired from Fox News in 2023, He had the largest program on cable news.
By far, Carlson could draw around 3 million viewers on a given night, way, way ahead of MSNBC and CNN. After Fox, Carlson brought a new show to YouTube, and his reach has grown. Some of his shows have as many as 7 million views. Carlson has been a standard bearer for the right. Many of us know about the racist conspiracy theory known as the Great Replacement only because of Tucker Carlson.
He's quite sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, too. He also celebrated Trump's threats to seize Greenland by force, not because he cares about Greenland, but because that would have wrecked the NATO alliance. And yet Carlson doesn't always stick to the MAGA party line. He called the shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis a tragedy, and he pointed out that the way people in MAGA were making light of it, that was exactly what they had condemned after the shooting of Charlie Kirk. Few people have thought more about Tucker Carlson in recent years than Jason Zengerly, who recently joined the New Yorker as a staff writer.
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