The latest on Tucker Carlson's departure from Fox News and the ongoing fallout from it, with National Review's Rich Lowry and Noah Rothman. Plus, a new piece from the Wall Street Journal on how Tucker s vulgar remarks about colleagues helped seal his fate at Fox News.
00:03:07.740There's one in the Wall Street Journal.
00:03:08.860Of course, that's owned by the same parent company as Fox News.
00:03:13.220Tucker Carlson's vulgar offensive messages about colleagues helped seal his fate at Fox News.
00:03:18.700Several weeks ago, as Fox News lawyers prepared for a courtroom showdown with Dominion Voting Systems,
00:03:22.640they presented Tucker Carlson with what they thought was good news.
00:03:26.460They had persuaded the court to redact from a legal filing the time he called a senior Fox executive the C-word, according to people familiar with the matter.
00:03:34.580Mr. Carlson, Fox News' most watched primetime host, was not impressed.
00:03:38.320He told his colleagues he wanted the world to know what he had said about the executive in a private message, said these people.
00:03:44.280Mr. Carlson said comments he made about former President Donald Trump, quote, I hate him passionately, that were in the court documents, were said during a momentary spasm of anger, while his dislike of this executive was deep and enduring.
00:03:57.280The private messages in which Mr. Carlson showed disregard for management and colleagues were a major factor in the decision to let him go, according to people familiar with the matter.
00:04:08.140In recent years, here's the tell about who they're talking about.
00:04:11.960Battles between Mr. Carlson and Fox management got so bad that former Trump aide Raj Shah was appointed to be his internal advocate and an intermediary between Mr. Carlson and Fox's communications department, according to people familiar with the arrangement and filings in the Dominion case.
00:04:34.000Mr. Carlson was livid that Fox News did not do more to protect him from the negative press coverage around the Dominion case that he was expected to testify in, given that.
00:04:41.960The primary actors responsible for the false election fraud claims at the heart of the suit were other Fox hosts and commentators and so on.
00:04:57.860She runs the Fox News media relations department, and she is as vicious as they come.
00:05:05.640And to some extent, it's not her fault because she does the bidding of her bosses.
00:05:10.540Irina is not running around rogue trying to take people down.
00:05:13.400She has the blessing of her higher ups.
00:05:16.100That's just the way corporations work.
00:05:18.060But this woman has terrorized enough people for long enough that there should be accountability.
00:05:24.020I went on the air at NBC at NBC in my new job and called her out by name because let me tell you, it is a pattern that when you leave an organization like this, it's not enough to try to say goodbye, to say, OK, we hope she fails or he fails.
00:05:39.920They try to ruin you in the dirtiest and most disgusting ways possible.
00:05:45.820And that's what I believe they're doing to Tucker right now.
00:05:48.660And I'll just give you one other thing before I bring you guys in for comment.
00:05:51.780Rolling Stone with the following headline.
00:05:54.440Fox has a secret oppo file to keep Tucker Carlson in check.
00:05:59.600Sources say Fox News executives have in their possession a dossier of alleged dirt on Tucker.
00:06:05.100Should he attack the network in the wake of his departure?
00:06:07.780A file includes internal complaints regarding workplace conduct, disparaging comments about management and colleagues and allegations that the now former primetime host created a toxic work environment.
00:06:19.480So what they're going to release his personnel file, any complaint, any minion at Fox News ever went in there to lodge against Tucker, whether it was substantiated or not, whether it was a money grab as a part of a departure or not.
00:06:55.600Yeah, and I mean, Tucker is going to be bleeding out of the ears and legal fees fighting for the rest of his contract to be paid out for the terms on which that will be paid out, whether there's these phony nondisclosure agreements that get poured into a severance agreement.
00:07:17.080Whether there's an agreement, whether there's an agreement about how long there's a non-compete clause, you know, where he can't start up his own enterprise or join a competing network.
00:07:29.140You know, all that thing is that's going to be a major fight.
00:07:32.600And that's why they're they're already pre fighting it in the court of public opinion.
00:07:37.520Right. Like there are stories now Vanity Fair had a story basically alleging that, you know, Rupert Murdoch was freaked out by Tucker praying or encouraging people to pray.
00:07:50.960You know, so the black eyes are being traded back and forth and it's it is a shame.
00:07:58.080You know, I mean, I think the simplest theory of the case is that after the Dominion lawsuit was settled in which Tucker wasn't playing a leading role, but in which, you know, if he had been outside the company before the settlement, he could have been a pretty devastating witness against figures like Suzanne Scott or or even other hosts in the company about what they said about Dominion on air or off air.
00:08:28.080So the Dominion lawsuit was settled and Rupert Murdoch, I think, has laid down the law and News Corp that they are not going to support Trump going forward.
00:08:39.080And Tucker Carlson being the totally incorrigible person I know that he is will not make promises about his political assessments or aspirations or his opinions in the future going forward or how he's going to express them.
00:08:56.560And so I think this is just cleaning up.
00:08:59.960I think that he was fired because they don't want the primetime spot on Fox to be unreliable going into the next election cycle.
00:09:10.720And so now that now the fight is on and it's it's going to be war.
00:10:38.700And what and who is the Wall Street Journal report all about?
00:10:41.780It is about some communications department worker that Tucker didn't like that.
00:10:49.100He, I believe, is the references to her may have used the C word about.
00:10:53.260And we know from the Dominion deposition that he did use the C word about Sidney Powell.
00:10:57.460I am not defending use of the C word, but these are private conversations that Tucker had about these people that were never meant to see the light of day.
00:11:05.200They only got had to be produced because the lawsuit and he complied with his discovery obligations and turn them over.
00:11:10.420But that's so what he was fired because of a private thought he had about this woman who is so bad.
00:11:17.800I, too, at Fox News had to hire my own outside communications department because I couldn't work with this person anymore.
00:11:28.720Fox paid for me to hire one of the top PR agents in Hollywood because I had to go outside of our industry because I couldn't deal with this jackal for one more day.
00:11:38.960Because her job is to undermine the people at Fox News.
00:11:42.960So this is the same person who he may or may not have said a nasty word about.
00:11:46.880And if he can't stand her, he's not alone.
00:11:49.680Find me a person in the industry who has nice things to say about this person.
00:11:53.220And I'll find you a journalist who's desperate for her info, who needs to write copy based on what she says.
00:12:00.400So this is but you can see what they're doing.
00:12:03.620It's the absolute politics of destruction.
00:12:05.400And Noah, the Rolling Stone piece, we've got an oppo file on you again comes.
00:12:42.940I certainly can't speak to your experience behind the scenes at Fox with the backbiting that you experienced.
00:12:47.980I can perhaps to some degree at NBC, which I was privy to to a certain extent.
00:12:52.620But as you said, this is the business we've chosen.
00:12:54.580I can't imagine what it's like, however, to work at an institution that maintains oppo files on you or where you have to consider that your telephonic communications may be read aloud to you in a deposition at any given moment.
00:13:05.240That seems like a harrowing experience.
00:13:07.320But I also don't need to limit my I also don't need to delve into behind the scenes accounts to show and to say that Tucker Carlson, while being an extremely talented broadcaster, had become an extremely irresponsible broadcaster.
00:13:20.680He had put his company in positions that were unenviable, not just in the step in this case against Dominion.
00:13:26.900He was in court and Fox was in court defending him as being an unreliable narrator.
00:13:31.000That was their defense of him even before the 2020 election.
00:13:34.100Well, that's legal that you as you well know, that's a legal defense where you try to say this is just an opinion guy spewing opinions.
00:13:40.020No one would take it as fact, which gets you out of the defamation realm.
00:13:44.400Yeah. And one of the reasons why he does that is because he is married to a narrative which he advances on a regular basis that the institutions and the powers that be are dedicated to manipulating you, to lying to you, to putting you in a position that advances their interests at the expense of your own.
00:13:58.920That is itself a manipulative enterprise.
00:14:03.580It is one of the reasons why I think the notion here that Tucker Carlson was fired on a whim because of his Christianity has somehow generated purchase among people who are suspending all disbelief.
00:14:13.920The notion that Fox is hostile to Christianity when it has hosts like Ainsley Earhart and Pete Hegseth leading prayer on air, it justifies belief.
00:14:22.400And it pings the pleasure centers and people who are predisposed to a kind of paranoia that I think is supremely detrimental to the conservative movement.
00:14:29.380Let me tell you this. I guarantee you Rupert Murdoch doesn't sit there watching Fox and Friends every morning.
00:14:34.300He probably loosely knows who Pete Hegseth is.
00:14:37.020Like, to suggest he's watching that and seeing it and reacting to it is to misunderstand how Rupert lives his life.
00:14:43.760Tucker's a different story. Primetime is a different story. It's the most visible in your face. That's the face of the brand.
00:14:49.420And he would see that. So I don't know what happened on the religion front, whether it mattered or it didn't.
00:14:53.240I don't know either, but I can say that my own personal experience, I was on the air with him, confronting him with the facts against which he was predisposed to ignore in order to advance the idea that the Trump administration was manipulating the public to go to war.
00:15:06.700And he didn't like that. So he engaged in ad hominem. So he engaged in the dismissal and distortion of facts that are on record.
00:15:15.260And while I can't speak to anybody else's personal experience behind the scenes, you can verify my experience for yourself. It's on YouTube.
00:15:20.800So, you know, OK, so you're more in the neocon field and, you know, you guys own that uncommentary and Tucker's exactly the opposite of that.
00:15:28.520So there's an ideological disagreement between you. I get that. That's not why he was fired.
00:15:32.820Literally nobody cared about that kind of a disagreement by Tucker.
00:15:36.160And the things that you're talking about, like, let's say the January 6th thing was suggesting that it was a false flag operation that happened two years ago, a year.
00:15:44.540I think it was two years ago. I think it's 2020.
00:15:46.040No, March. March. The segment that the segment where he alleged implicitly that an individual was an FBI plant absent any evidence occurred in March.
00:15:53.140That's Ray Epps. And that's happened well before this past March, Noah. Well before this past March.
00:15:57.660The January 6th false flag long term, a long form documentary or whatever they were calling it happened two years ago.
00:16:04.400It was one of the reasons why Shepard Smith threw a fit and why Chris Wallace left.
00:16:09.200If memories are certainly on the Chris Wallace thing. Trust me, that happened a long time ago.
00:16:13.080I understand the footage that he received.
00:16:15.060You're suggesting that's why he was let go. And that's bullshit.
00:17:34.840Like it used to be that Fox News kind of set the agenda for the day on the right, at least, and maybe even for the country in its morning meetings,
00:17:43.600you know, where it kind of covers these are the stories for the day that are going to be covered on the network.
00:17:48.440And then the primetime hosts are going to have them on their own.
00:17:53.240I mean, as far as I can tell, Tucker spends the morning fly fishing and then sits down after texting with friends and reading the news
00:18:02.100and writes a monologue without consulting anyone.
00:18:05.020And that monologue will drive the conversation for the next 24 hours sometimes.
00:18:10.220So, yeah, I mean, he was kind of beyond or beyond the reach of the institution itself.
00:18:17.680And and like I said, I think I mean, we saw the way I think the last time I was on on your show, Megan,
00:18:23.180we saw how the New York Post treated Donald Trump's announcement for president, which was like Florida man reapplies for job or whatever.
00:18:32.540It's like, you know, the line has gone out at News Corp.
00:18:37.100This is no longer going to be Trump country.
00:18:40.040And I think that's something that Tucker Carlson won't agree to.
00:18:44.880You know, like he's so he just will not be reliable to to do to say something if he doesn't want to say it.
00:18:55.240The the other narrative emerging now is one I find equally unpersuasive, and that is that this woman who filed a lawsuit against Fox, Abby Grossberg, was instrumental to his termination.
00:19:07.020Now, this person worked for Tucker for about two minutes.
00:19:09.760Tucker was never in the building. And as far as I can tell, because she did an in-depth interview with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC yesterday,
00:19:16.440she doesn't even have any specific allegations about Tucker.
00:19:19.280Her allegations are at best about the people in his pod, in his news pod at the channel.
00:19:25.560Tucker didn't work in the Fox News building.
00:19:28.680Neither does Hannity, by the way. And in part, I'm sure it's for reasons like this.
00:19:32.680When you're that big a star, you're that big a target and people like to throw things at you that are not true as a money grab.
00:19:42.680They just do. That's not to say every allegation against anybody who's a star is bullshit, but there's a pattern of this kind of thing happening.
00:19:49.740And I'm sure they just enjoyed being home with their families and not dealing in the middle of this toxic work environment.
00:19:56.040Trust me, it's delightful to not have to do that.
00:19:58.940Trust. And my friends inside the building still say the same thing.
00:20:02.900They feel the same as I do there. They would love to not have to show up at 12, 11 every day.
00:20:08.240So she now is out there talking about how, you know, it was it was this word, this environment in which she heard the C word regularly,
00:20:17.360that she was shocked, shocked to show up and see that picture of Nancy Pelosi in the bathing suit with the breasts kind of hanging out,
00:20:24.940blown up in poster size and the newsroom pod.
00:20:28.900I mean, who are we kidding? Like, seriously, MBD, you're laughing.
00:20:32.620Who are we kidding? Like that Fox News is going to fire Tucker and his EP because they're offended.
00:20:41.380Yeah, I mean, that is you could say that that's that's a little juvenile or a little bit in bad taste.
00:20:51.180But I mean, that's literally all it is, is it's juvenile and in bad taste.
00:20:54.980It's not necessarily the sign of of a an environment that is dangerous or hostile.
00:21:02.340I don't think you could ever get that across the line to a jury if you if you literally like blew up the photo and showed the evidence that a bunch of guys at a conservative network were kind of laughing at the appearance of Nancy Pelosi.
00:21:20.600You know, people laughed at the appearance of Bill Clinton in his gym short in his running shorts.
00:21:26.400I mean, it's just the nature of politics to kind of laugh at your enemies when they look like they've embarrassed themselves somehow.
00:21:35.000Yeah, I mean, the it is interesting to me that the Grossberg interview landed when it landed when it did.
00:21:46.880Right. I mean, it's sort of like this lawsuit has been brewing for a little while now, but now it's becoming, you know, a public news story with video footage and interviews precisely at a time when Tucker can't defend himself in public.
00:22:19.620So so I don't want to prejudge it, but it does feel like like I said, like an ongoing PR war that that that Fox knows is absolutely massive.
00:22:31.380And important for them, too, is is going to be keeping him off the air and keeping him from attacking them from a large platform.
00:22:44.200Right. So the more that they can have basically the airwaves to themselves to trash him, the better for Fox News.
00:22:52.300Just to add the Daily Mail's reporting that they talked to Tucker, it sounds like they just found him on his golf cart down in Florida.
00:23:02.620He said retirement's going great so far.
00:23:06.300I haven't eaten dinner with my wife on a weeknight in seven years.
00:23:10.140Pressed on his future, the flamethrowing former hosts of Tucker Carlson Tonight flashed a broad smile and joked appetizers plus entree.
00:23:17.760Smart move, as you point out. No, I there's he's limited in what he can say, as as I pointed out yesterday on the show, he's not yet actually been fired.
00:23:26.960He's his show's been pulled. His access to company emails been pulled, but he is not actually fired.
00:23:33.360So they have to negotiate this. And that's why Brian Friedman is representing him.
00:23:36.360Let's just not move on from the Abby Grossberg thing.
00:23:39.460So here's this woman. And because, yes, MSNBC gives her an interview, a long interview, and she says she's got tapes, some 90 tapes.
00:23:46.800That she, Abby, has not yet been through. But she admits she doesn't think there's anything on there that led to Tucker's termination.
00:23:54.580That's what she told Nicole Wallace, though. She she surmises maybe her lawsuit had something to do with it.
00:24:01.080She's talking about what it was like to be there. And I have a lot of thoughts on this young woman.
00:24:04.660But what I was going to say is not only did she get on MSNBC, but she keeps getting referenced in all these newspaper articles about Tucker's fires firing.
00:24:11.120You know, he called Sidney Powell the C word. He may have called this Fox executive unnamed the C word.
00:24:17.740And now this girl comes forward to say hostile and wire environment in his work place pod.
00:24:22.820Here's a little bit of this Abby Grossberg on with Nicole Wallace.
00:24:27.500I was hoping that it would be more professional and what he was portraying on air was just a show.
00:24:33.640And unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
00:24:35.420So when do you realize that immediately?
00:24:40.360I show up first day of work and I know that this is a popular one.
00:24:44.720It's been widely publicized. There are literally pictures like this big of Nancy Pelosi in a bathing suit in Europe, plastered all over.
00:24:54.560There was even one on my computer screen for the temporary computer I had to use and I had to take it down just to work.
00:25:00.880Within a few days there, I was called into Justin Wells' office with Alex McCaskill, who was a senior producer as well, and asked if Maria was having an affair with Kevin McCarthy.
00:25:16.320I couldn't even believe it. I was floored.
00:25:18.060Well, that might be relevant information for a company to know whether one of its main stars is actually having an affair with the possible next speaker of the House.
00:25:27.640So I'm not sure in what context that came up.
00:25:30.680But here's the here's one of the things I wanted to ask you about, Noah.
00:25:33.580So I don't I have a lot of mixed feelings about Abby Grossberg.
00:25:38.440I think she's too thin skinned to work in news.
00:25:40.780It's it's a rough and tumble business there.
00:25:43.920We don't speak the Queen's English. And if you can't take some inappropriate barbs here and there, you're not going to last very long in it.
00:26:20.500OK, that's not the solution to your problems.
00:26:22.540But it did. It does speak to what I'm trying to get to in this segment, which is news is uniquely disgusting.
00:26:30.220Thick skin or not, it has this dark, toxic effect on most of us who are in it.
00:26:39.760And it takes a daily effort to not become dark and toxic yourself.
00:26:44.460I mean, yeah, I would imagine that Abby's experience is not all that uncommon, wasn't necessarily my experience, but I did have, you know, some some encounters with that sort of those incentives.
00:26:57.700However, because I believe her experience is probably rather common, I kind of doubt that she her whatever the facts that she can marshal so far, what we have in evidence before us suggests a rather sophomoric culture, which is hardly enough to justify anything more than a nuisance settlement, is evidence that this was a contributing factor to Tucker Carlson's dismissal.
00:27:22.500So, but it may have been a I'm going to let you I'm going to let you finish your point.
00:27:26.500But just to fill in, I found this soundbite that Wallace asked her, are you aware of anything that came up in the discovery process as it pertains to Tucker, meaning in the Dominion case that could have led to his firing answer?
00:27:37.260No, not that I'm aware of. Keep going.
00:27:40.000Yeah, well, I'm I'm not entirely sure that it's something that's easily dismissed just because the if the alternative is not fiduciary, but editorial, then the evidentiary burden on us to prove
00:27:52.320that is far higher. We have plenty of evidence to suggest that fiduciary obligations or costly settlements will cost you the 8 p.m.
00:27:59.400slot. It happened to the last guy. I mean, that is a razor.
00:28:03.840If this was about the Dominion settlement, why isn't Maria Bartiromo fired? Why isn't Janine Pirro fired?
00:28:09.240That's a good question. But Lou Dobbs ain't there anymore.
00:28:11.880And Lou Dobbs isn't there anymore because of a costly settlement.
00:28:15.500Oh, my God, that's not true. That's not true.
00:28:17.920O'Reilly paid sixty nine million dollars in sexual harassment settlements and they continued employing him and gave him twenty five million dollars a year.
00:28:27.420Noah O'Reilly was let go because the press got a hold of the story.
00:28:33.060That's why they had no choice but to cut ties.
00:28:36.440But that's a fiduciary obligation to shareholders right there.
00:28:38.420But they employed. No, no, they could.
00:28:40.700They were fine to employ him knowing he'd paid out 70 million bucks to these to these women who had accused him.
00:28:48.520Right. And until it became public knowledge, his conduct, which became an unsustainable situation.
00:29:48.720And what I'm looking at in public and what's submitted in public constitutes a cumulative burden about on this program that at least justifies skepticism about the value of its longevity.
00:30:05.960I mean, that's the real question is, you know, what's what's the future of cable news in the wake of not just Tucker's departure, but just the explosion of digital media.
00:30:15.320I actually look this up to try to get. Hold on a second. I'll find it to see in the case of Tucker.
00:30:21.380What were what were the ratings? What's the ratings hit look like?
00:30:25.900And hold on, Debbie, was that in our update today or was that yesterday's packet?
00:30:29.840All right. I'll try to find the page. Hold on. I'm sure it's brutal.
00:30:33.740So they lost six hundred thousand. I compared last Monday when Tucker was on because you don't want to use a Friday to a Monday because Fridays are always low in prime time.
00:30:42.020So last Monday when Tucker was on, he got three point two million this Monday, the first that he was not on, they had two point six million.
00:30:50.380So they lost six hundred thousand six hundred thousand viewers, which is about a 20 percent drop.
00:30:56.840Last Monday when Tucker was on, he pulled four hundred forty five thousand in the key demo, 25 to 54 year olds.
00:31:02.260This Monday without him, they pulled a two ninety four, which is about a thirty four percent drop.
00:31:08.600So twenty percent in the overall, thirty four percent in the key demo, which is one third.
00:31:12.800That's what they actually care about. I don't know whether it will continue or whether it was momentary.
00:31:17.900You know, they had to know that was coming. They had to know they were going to take that sort of a hit and prepared for it, understood that that's what they were inviting.
00:31:24.100So you have to assume if they were going to take that kind of a hit, that the costs that they would incur and the benefits that they were anticipating were profoundly mismatched and the benefits don't make sense if it's purely editorial.
00:31:39.540Well, and that's the thing is like MBD, we're sitting here speculating about the Wall Street Journal report, the Rolling Stone threat, the Gabe Sherman reporting on the religion, all of this because Fox didn't give him a reason when they said it's done.
00:31:54.100And they didn't give their audience a reason. And what they do instead is they try to leak terrible things about the person in the media.
00:32:01.360So, oh, we were justified because he's a shitbag. Right. It's really what's happening here.
00:32:05.840And to me, if I were a Fox audience member and I don't really watch any cable news anymore or television news, I'd be pissed.
00:32:14.740I'd say you you make me fall in love with this guy. Then you pull him. You don't tell him or me why.
00:32:21.140I have no idea why. I'm just kind of pissed off that my favorite host is gone.
00:32:25.060And then I see you trying to ruin him in the press without putting your fingerprints on it.
00:32:28.400But it's clear that it's you. So I don't think that's going to help Fox News restore trust and ratings at 8 p.m.
00:32:34.900But they're banking on Fox just being a juggernaut that people kind of only have Fox if you're a conservative and you want to watch cable news.
00:32:43.620Yes, you've got Newsmax in some places, OANN, but those have never been truly meaningful competitors.
00:32:48.700So they're just banking on their, you know, their dominance.
00:32:51.960Yeah. And listen, they're already putting out tons of stories that, oh, it's the real estate at at Fox that's valuable, not the stars that occupy that real estate.
00:33:03.980And there is a little bit of truth to that. Right.
00:33:06.740Like people didn't know Tucker Carlson would take off the way he did in the 8 p.m. time slot.
00:33:12.220But the fact is, I don't I don't know if I buy that it's true.
00:33:17.160I think Fox will have a very hard time reassembling the numbers in the key demographic after Tucker leaves.
00:33:27.380And, you know, a lot of people like to say that, oh, Tucker Carlson, you know, at most he's talking to three million people a night.
00:33:35.660And, you know, that's less than one percent of the country.
00:33:39.120That's, you know, less than, you know, what point?
00:34:50.340And so he like necessarily brings a very kind of different sensibility to his broadcasting because of that, because natively and truly he's he is a great writer.
00:35:07.920I mean, he was he was basically a superlative prize winning journalist as a as a feature writer for not just the Weekly Standard, but also for Esquire magazine and, you know, any magazine he wanted to write for before he kind of took off in his television career.
00:35:29.300So I think it's going to be very hard for for them to recoup that audience.
00:35:35.280They may, however, they may, however, recoup the money because and I think this is kind of an understated part of the story and one that I don't think Fox wants to advertise.
00:35:45.020But the advertising boycott against Tucker Carlson tonight was extremely effective.
00:35:50.940Yeah. And, you know, that's why his his show was full of my pillow ads.
00:35:57.980And, you know, Rachel Maddow is as over on MSNBC promoting all sorts of insane conspiracy theories about Vladimir Putin.
00:36:09.360Right. Like and that's that's a huge difference.
00:36:12.820And I don't think Fox wants to tell the truth, which is that if this was a financial decision, it was Fox caving into the left.
00:36:20.180I mean, like that's that is part of the story here, too, that the left is able to exercise this kind of commercial influence over the Fox News brand.
00:36:32.980I hadn't I'd gotten to the place where I understood how Tucker wasn't making them a ton of money on the ad fees for sure.
00:36:39.340I mean, on the subscription fee is probably a different story because he drives numbers and numbers are what gets DirecTV to pay more to have you as part of their offering.
00:37:30.860The suggestion of what he was suggesting on January 6th was not provable, not falsifiable, because it was a conspiracy theory.
00:37:38.160And frankly, yeah, if you're going to throw yourself on the fire for the conservative movement, just just to suggest, I would say, because I pride myself on this, that you can navigate the double standards that are applied to conservatism.
00:37:51.680Get your message out and persuade persuadables in ways that don't draw fire just to make yourself a martyr.
00:37:57.940Well, how have you advanced the conservative movement?
00:37:59.580I see how you've advanced your own personal prospects.
00:38:08.660One thing I will say for Tucker in Tucker's defense is his, you know, his worldview of suspicion of institutions, which generates the stories about January 6th that Noah mentions, is also the one that generates ahead of everyone else.
00:38:26.220Suspicion suspicion about Dr. Fauci's advice on masks or whether a willingness to talk about whether vaccines really prevented transmission of COVID-19.
00:38:37.460And so whether or not vaccine mandates could even be rational, let alone justifiable as a matter of policy or the lab leak theory, right?
00:38:47.560Like, I mean, he kind of was ahead of almost everyone, except maybe National Review, where Jim Garrity was very early on that as well.
00:38:57.680And so, yeah, I mean, there is in media, the reason you need a diverse media in a republic like ours is because there are some truths that can be expressed in the New York Times.
00:39:09.060And there's some truths that can only be expressed in tabloid media, like headless body and topless bar, right?
00:39:16.120Like, that's a real news story, and only the New York Post can give it justice.
00:39:21.460And it's the same thing with establishment trusting media and, you know, non-establishment media.
00:39:28.680And I think the really big story, the really big kind of like bow around the Tucker Carlson Fox News story is that fundamentally Tucker Carlson is and wants to be an outsider media figure.
00:39:45.020Like a true, like Joe Rogan, someone who floats theories, sometimes justifiably, sometimes, you know, you could say not justifiably, but stories that tilt against the establishment, against the major institutions, which he views as basically totally captive and corrupt.
00:40:05.440And it leads to, I agree with Noah that it can lead to big mistakes, and it can even lead to legal liability when you make those mistakes.
00:40:14.840But in our particular age, it sometimes leads to gold, which is, and that gold was found during the pandemic when our major public health institutions were lying to us, right?
00:40:27.940And we're self-interestedly lying to us.
00:40:30.920And if you begin with a hermeneutic of total suspicion of our institutions, you're going to get to that story first, and you're going to reap the most from it.
00:40:46.140And, you know, people mocked the so-called deep state.
00:40:48.520But then we've had all these revelations since then about the FBI actually targeting people who are on the right and actually trying to put people objecting to mask mandates on terrorist watch lists and call them domestic terrorists and so on.
00:41:00.120And at Fox, when I was there, if you said that, you probably would have been fired for saying that, right?
00:41:05.500And then you have people like Tucker who weren't afraid to press on these institutions that had been revered in conservative circles saying, this is bullshit.
00:41:19.740He wasn't 100% right on 100% of the things.
00:41:22.440But we needed his boldness as part of the national conversation.
00:41:25.660And I think Tucker would be the first to admit he doesn't always get it right.
00:41:28.460But he's, unlike most of these people, okay with admitting his frailty, his mistakes, and when he gets things wrong, unlike people like Rachel Maddow at your old network, Noah.
00:41:38.860You know, I mean, I don't think I have to persuade you.
00:41:41.100If we want to talk about who deals in disinformation, Fox News versus MSNBC, we could spend way more time on the latter.
00:41:49.080I mean, okay, so Tucker was somewhat controversial and took some rhetorical risks.
00:41:52.620What the hell is Joy Reid still doing on the air over there?
00:41:55.460Truly, like, is there a more racist person on television?
00:41:59.640How does she have a primetime role there?
00:42:03.440Yeah, there's a bit of a hostage crisis, I would agree, particularly in the post-Andy Lack days over at MSNBC.
00:42:09.860And I think Michael's point is very well taken, that a particular worldview that starts from the position of suspicion and hostility, although while eschewing paranoia, can get to these stories faster than those who start from a position of trust and deference.
00:42:28.160But I disagree strongly with the notion that this outlook that he espoused, which somehow sometimes led him to conclusions before others did that turned out to be correct, is also matched by a humility that concedes when the facts warrant a reevaluation of his particular position.
00:42:50.400I did not see that. In fact, I encountered precisely the opposite, and more often than not saw encouragement for individuals to dig in, despite contradictory evidence.