Tucker Carlson is the most powerful man in the world at Fox News, and he's got a lot of power. He's also one of the most hated and vilified on the right, and there's no question that he's an enemy of the liberal media establishment.
00:01:13.980I mean, that shaped at least me and a lot of other people growing up to believe that you can disagree with everything that Tip O'Neill believes and Tip O'Neill can disagree with everything that you believe in.
00:01:29.100And yet, at the end of the day, you can talk and have a rule that at six o'clock at night, which they did, politics was put to the side and they became friends.
00:01:41.420And think about what they were able to accomplish.
00:01:44.780We've, unfortunately, conservatives have been growing up over the past five, six, seven, eight years thinking the way to win is to be hateful.
00:01:54.280The way to win is, I hate to use this word, but with Tucker Carlson, it fits better than anything.
00:01:59.640The gaslighting, the very things that are a lie, you call it the truth and say they want, they don't want you, they're lying to you when they tell you this about January 6th.
00:02:10.340So they're lying to you and we're the only ones telling you the truth and da, da, da, da, da.
00:02:15.260And people watching, for the most part, they dig below it.
00:03:43.720And, you know, I think it's really important to put out where Republican morality has failed, in many ways, the law has prevailed.
00:03:50.840And that's what you're talking about with the prosecution of the January 6th defendants, where you're talking about the giant settlement that Fox has paid to Dominion.
00:04:01.300Probably more checks to come in the future.
00:04:03.420And even in the Tucker Carlson situation, there's reporting that the Abby Grossberg lawsuit that was exposing sexism and bigotry in the workplace was a factor in Tucker Carlson's fight.
00:04:16.480Okay, we're going to put a pin in it right there.
00:04:20.320We're going to get back to that control room.
00:04:22.220Just hold it right there because that's so – I actually thought – my producer said before, hey, they've got a PSA up.
00:04:28.560I actually thought – I'll get the fish hook out right now.
00:04:32.100We've got Burquam and Anthony Aguero down at the border.
00:04:35.660Big breaking news about when Title 42 lifts this invasion, as we talked about last night on the 6 o'clock show.
00:04:42.060I've got the Darren Beattie from Revolver.
00:04:46.980I could play another five minutes of that because Joe and them are on a roll.
00:04:50.020But the obsession with Tucker Carlson, the obsession with our populist nationalist movement, 60 Minutes with Revolver, you see right there, they're frothing at the mouth.
00:05:12.220Well, there's a lot going on there, as you say.
00:05:14.800I mean, one clear dimension that's barely beneath the subtext is extreme, bubbling, professional jealousy.
00:05:25.340I mean, it must bother them to no end that Tucker Carlson just left them in the dust as far as ratings.
00:05:32.760And also, they might have still some smidgen of conscience left buried deep down in them that tells them that Tucker's actually saying things that they kind of think they should say,
00:05:44.240but they're too scared, and they sold themselves a long time ago.
00:05:47.880So I think there's a lot of interesting—
00:05:57.920So there are so many reasons for just personal and professional resentment that come to the fore when you listen to these things.
00:06:05.460But then there's the broader issue of simply, as I've said in other contexts, I've said on this show, now I'm thrilled to be in studio to be able to say it again in person, is that, you know, Tucker Carlson was a fluke on national television.
00:06:18.720You know, it's one thing, you know, I came to the war room all the time.
00:06:21.580We talked about the January 6th stuff all the time.
00:06:28.780But to speak to a national audience on primetime, you're not supposed to be allowed to talk about—you're not—you've got to stay very, very carefully in the playpen.
00:06:38.940You've got to be like Kilmeade and just, you know, give the yuck-yuck, give the slop.
00:06:57.460Tucker, with the hour of populist nationalism every night, and he had a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people that are registered Republican that are really kind of low-information voters when you consider the readers of Revolver and War Room are activists that are engaged every day.
00:07:14.260Tucker was reaching them, and he was reaching what I call the Bernie Bros or Tim Pool audience, African-Americans and young, disaffected males who, you know, think they're being lied to.
00:07:25.400That was the new audience he was bringing in.
00:07:27.040The rest of Fox, even to the degree they started to come over to the right, because Tucker's audience was so big, and it was becoming a gravitational pull to do that.
00:07:37.000They're going to go back to the standard.
00:07:38.300Look, the Murdochs who made the decision to fire him because they wanted that, they don't want populist nationalism in that slot, are, you know, they're all about, you know, neoliberal neocons.
00:07:53.920You're going to get Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, the support of the wars, the support of Wall Street, don't go too hard on the budget deficits, all of that.
00:08:01.600That's what Tucker was counter to in reaching a broader audience.
00:08:05.280But why did these people go after him as an extremist?
00:08:15.080Well, I mean, he's an extremist with respect to the radical and malicious agenda of the corrupt and illegitimate filth that run the regime.
00:08:26.200He's not an extremist with respect to the interests and beliefs of the American people.
00:08:31.600In fact, he's very much in line with those interests and beliefs, and his ratings speak for that.
00:08:36.760So the idea of calling the person who has the highest rated show on national television an extremist, I mean, you might as well call the vast majority of the American people extremist, which is frankly what they do.
00:08:50.680It has nothing to do with one's orientation relative to others.
00:08:56.040Because extremism is simply a disparaging term they use to refer to anyone who objects to the masters who control them, to the Murdochs, to the handful of powerful and corrupt people who think they have the right to dictate opinion to the rest of the American masses.
00:09:15.400So the extremists, like so many other terms that they use, disinformation, whatnot, all the terms they use are not only fake, but they're actually telling because they actually describe what the people using them are and what they're doing.
00:09:29.560I want to go to – we've got Ben Berquam on the border.
00:09:32.940I want to talk about this extremism for a second because it's one of the things that Tucker would very much focus on.
00:09:37.200I also think Tucker was very close to President Trump, and you and I have this debate behind the scenes, you know, brotherly fight, me with the CCP, you saying the administrative state, the deep state's the number one enemy, not the CCP.
00:09:51.520I think Tucker and the president would come down on your side, that the administrative state, the deep state, which I rank number two, is the most mortal threat.
00:09:59.280Let's go to the border, and here's why.
00:10:00.780Yesterday on this show, we had a congressman, Andy Biggs, that sat there and said he just got off a conference call with certain executives in big counties on the border in Arizona.
00:10:11.760And they were telling them they had just had a briefing by Border Patrol that says along the southern border of the United States, there's 700,000 to a million illegal aliens prepared.
00:10:23.620When Title 42 comes off, they're basically prepared, he said, to storm the gates, and the Border Patrol is not prepared for it.
00:10:31.440The Biden regime is not prepared for this.
00:10:33.380So this Title 42 that comes off is going to be something.
00:10:37.140And, of course, the mainstream media will not cover this.
00:10:39.180In fact, Joe Scarborough said right there, for us even talking about it, we're extremists.
00:10:43.000Do we have Ben Berquam, Real America's Voice, Ben Berquam, and Brother Aguero down?
00:11:08.960And what's happening is as they come in, they're just going across.
00:11:11.540We have 2,000 people a day crossing here.
00:11:14.200And I was interviewing people this morning, and they're all saying the CVP-1 isn't working, as Mayorkas lied yesterday again and said it was.
00:11:59.160We had Todd Benzman in there yesterday in Reynoso, or just got back to Reynoso.
00:12:02.50015,000 Haitians are waiting for Title 42.
00:12:05.960How can a guy like Tucker Carlson report that fact, which you see on his show more than all Fox combined, about this, and he's called an extremist?
00:12:15.560Well, again, I mean, these are the things that the American people care about, but you're not supposed to talk about, according to the corrupt and illegitimate filth that run the regime,
00:12:25.800and who are, by the way, actively sponsoring this invasion of the country.
00:12:31.480So, I mean, in the grand sweep of history, I don't think there's ever been a precedent whereby the illegitimate rulers of a regime,
00:12:43.220no matter how bad they are, no matter what kind of iniquities they visit upon their people,
00:12:49.500I've never heard of an instance of them just welcoming this mass invasion in order to dispossess their own people.
00:12:57.520Even Chairman Mao in China, who is one of the most brutal and murderous dictators in history,
00:13:04.980I like to speculate, can you imagine somebody going up to Mao, one of his advisors, and saying,
00:13:10.120you know, I've got a great idea, why don't we open up the borders to China and just allow a mass invasion such that
00:13:16.220in 40 or 50 years, China will no longer be Chinese.
00:13:20.440Even the sociopath, you know, devil Mao would look that person in the eye and say,
00:17:25.340I had a great relationship and a lot of respect for Roger Ailes.
00:17:27.960But Ailes would tell you, when Murdoch wanted something, and Murdoch wanted that, Murdoch wanted the hit on Trump right of the box in 2015.
00:17:40.120This piece is very well reported, researched.
00:17:45.280And that's just because it reinforces what I've been saying.
00:17:47.520But what they've done, they've made a strategic decision.
00:17:52.460They want that block back at 8 o'clock at night.
00:17:55.740They don't want Tucker Carlson talking to 4 million, 4.5 million people who are not just Trump supporters, but other people, too, talking populism, nationalism, talking about the administrative state, talking about the deep state, bringing up all the topics he would bring up.
00:18:13.180Look at Tucker in the last two weeks, a great interview with Trump, but a great interview with Bobby Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:18:19.880And Tucker's always, I mean, quite frankly, the 60 Minutes thing, they went after Tucker personally.
00:18:25.540But the whole thing was popping up revolver where Tucker had given you the platform to get to a broader audience on the J6 and the Ray Epps piece.
00:18:34.980And here's the thing with the Breitbart article.
00:18:38.500What they intend to do, and they may not be able to do it for a whole host of reasons, but what they intend to do is continue to pay Tucker the $20 million a year and keep him off of it.
00:18:48.440Because Tucker, he could go build his own channel.
00:20:33.340And also, there was a dimension of the Boyle piece about Bongino.
00:20:37.320Bongino similarly couldn't be controlled.
00:20:39.700And it just so happens to be that Tucker and Bongino were the only people on Fox that would talk about Revolver News, talk about the January 6th.
00:20:50.200You know, it's just – it's a remarkable coincidence there.
00:20:56.720But, yes, they want to take Tucker off the table.
00:20:59.420They want to take that message off the table.
00:21:01.420Well, as I pointed out, it was a fluke that Tucker was on national TV in the first place.
00:21:05.760He kind of got his position because the Murdochs tried so hard to kill Trump in 2016.
00:21:12.540And when they failed, even the Murdochs knew that they had to pay some kind of lip service to the populist nationalist movement that Trump represented.
00:21:20.720So they say, okay, we'll give Tucker this slot here.
00:21:23.960Little did they know that, you know, Tucker was not a Killmead.
00:21:27.320Tucker was something completely different, completely unique with respect not only to his colleagues at Fox but with respect to the entire American media.
00:21:36.560Well, he combined a unique intellect that – he's a curious guy.
00:21:42.660So he's got a deep intellect and curious.
00:21:45.400Number two, he's always been anti-authoritarian.
00:21:47.700Even at Daily Caller where he and I disagreed, Breitbart was a much more populist nationalist.
00:22:35.060And the rest, quite frankly, the last stuff you see on conservative TV.
00:22:37.480It's interesting you bring up Maddow because the ratings are certainly not comparable.
00:22:42.860But if we look at the content though – and I'm not incredibly familiar with Maddow's show so maybe I'm wrong here – but there are numerous instances.
00:22:51.320As I pointed out, Tucker is unique not only with respect to Fox News, with respect to the American media generally.
00:22:57.260And there are a number of critical instances in which Tucker Carlson was the lone voice of dissent, the lone alternative view with respect to the broad sweep of American media as such.
00:23:10.220I can't think of a single example in which Maddow or anyone else can say we're the only people on American media covering this alternative point of view on a critical issue.
00:23:24.180Tucker was the only person who did that, especially when it came to foreign policy.
00:23:28.100The one that jumps off the page, obviously, is Ukraine.
00:23:36.560Where it was the New York Times and the Washington Post that broke these massive stories of the Pentagon Papers, all back in the 60s and 70s.
00:23:48.600It was Tucker, and I think that – hey, don't let it be lost on people.
00:23:52.080His stance on Ukraine and the intellectual rigor he brought to that not only helped all of us change the attitude on the Ukraine – people have been anti this Ukraine war from the beginning.
00:24:01.580But he was starting to get noticed because it's in prime time, and he's getting people that are not already activists and true believers, but he's getting those – what I call the entrepreneurial class or managerial class that is really, quite frankly, low information when it comes to politics.
00:24:23.640You know, Tim Scott and all the guys in South Carolina or Lindsey and everybody are telling me it's all – you know, we should be doing this like we did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
00:24:34.500And then you heard one of the very first pieces Politico did was how in the Pentagon they're laughing.
00:24:45.720What does that say about – what does that say about the military-industrial complex?
00:24:49.660Well, what it says is that all prime time media – and again, we can get to the 60 minutes thing because they're a clear example of this – all legacy prime time media, all of it is effectively state-controlled media.
00:25:07.340And of course, the military-industrial complex cheers because – especially in the Pentagon they're cheering because not only did Tucker expose the hypocrisy and the ridiculousness of the stated war aims, he exposed the ridiculousness and incompetence on the personnel level.
00:25:25.660Just how self-important and utterly mediocre these military officials really are at the highest levels in the Pentagon.
00:25:36.660All they do is coast along, taking their marching orders from lobbyists and the defense contractors until they can retire and take a nice $40,000, $50,000 a month contract from some Middle Eastern country.
00:26:00.800Ben, you see this in the coverage of this border crisis.
00:26:04.540We have congressmen tell 700,000 – or people in Arizona, officials saying 700,000 to a million, they're being told, are prepped now at the border after Title 42 comes off, a potential massive surge, that they're blaming – they're blaming Republicans to try to balance the budget.
00:26:22.840It's now the Republicans that are taking all the guys off the border.
00:26:50.460The only reason why they want more money is to give more money to the United Nations, to the NGOs that are operating this child trafficking and trafficking operation down here.
00:27:00.840They don't want to actually fix the problem.
00:27:02.240They don't want more money for Border Patrol.
00:27:03.860They don't want more money for fencing and walls.
00:27:05.580They don't want more money for infrastructure.
00:27:07.240They want more money so that they can pay off the NGOs that are profiting billions of dollars.
00:27:13.780Not only should the Republicans not give more money to this.
00:27:16.280The first thing, every single House Republican, if you're watching this, every single citizen in America needs to call your House Republicans and say, defund these NGOs.
00:27:40.060And you can see behind me that area of water in the river.
00:27:42.880That's actually where they're crossing.
00:27:44.440Everywhere else in the river, it's full of reeds.
00:27:45.980There's three spots here they're crossing.
00:27:47.760You've got the National Guard, Mexican National Guard, set up here as optics, just like we've seen before, pretending like they're stopping it.
00:47:22.340And a lot of that, I think, is people starting to sit in about the policy differences and the fact we got the Third World War.
00:47:28.020And I don't think Ron DeSantis – I think his consultants did him a disservice by sending him, like, on a two-day or three-day jaunt over to Korea and Japan to burnish his international experience.
00:48:04.780This gets back to a mentality, and this, I think, is one of the important things for the audience to – the same decision-making that went in at Fox is the same decision-making that goes into these donors.
00:48:17.200They are neoliberal neocons, and they hate Trump because Trump is the leader of a movement that they can't control.
00:48:26.980And they see – and I got to tell you, don't think it wasn't on the calculus of Lachlan and James Murdoch when they see Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on that thing with Tucker Carlson, and they go, man, we're going to have a year and a half of this, three nights a week.
00:48:41.620Mitch McConnell is not going to like that.
00:49:03.240I think he's better than that, but this is the function that all of these establishment people are trying to use him for.
00:49:09.560They're trying to use him as the Brian Kilmeade of politics, saying, okay, Trump we can't control, just like the executives couldn't control Tucker.
00:49:19.640We need to take him off the list, and we're going to espouse this ridiculous line of Trumpism after Trump, which, as I've said, it's a scam.
00:49:28.820It is a scam to get rid of both Trumpism and Trump because you can't disaggregate the movement from the individual.
00:50:16.660Brian Kemp, I can already hear Brian Kemp's the new savior for all this.
00:50:22.720Barris, once again, is this primary in your mind right now over?
00:50:27.880Should we start thinking about the general election and pulling all the forces together to take down the Biden, Michelle Obama, Newsom, whoever they throw up at us?
00:50:36.140This is where I wanted to go next, Steve.
00:50:38.160The $200 million that big mega donors want to throw at Trump in this primary to lose and potentially damage him for a general election would be a lot better spent in matching Democrats.
00:50:49.560Maybe you can't even match them, but you have to close the gap when it comes to this national vote – harvesting gathering is a better word – vote gathering operation that they have built since COVID, which everyone thought or would disappear in 2022.
00:52:02.720But, again, once you hit 60, I just – I don't know what DeSantis is going to do to reverse this.
00:52:11.100Because, again, there are reasons he fell.
00:52:14.660And I don't mean to, like, drone on here with Steve, but the first crack in his armor came from, ironically, when he flip-flopped on Ukraine and it became an issue.
00:52:23.560And Tucker asked for all of these detailed responses.