I'm talking about people who are neo-Nazis, open nativists, white nationalists, people who get together in dark corners of the internet, mostly, and propound theories about how a cabal of elites - sometimes Jews, sometimes broader - are trying to replace Americans. Now, that is a direct borrowing of language and concept from white nationalists and not just conservatives. And even if you're not paying much attention to cable news, you'll probably recall that last spring he got in some hot water for saying, yeah, the elites in this country are trying to replace Americans with obedient people from what he called the Third World. This idea of replacement theory - you've probably heard about it. They are a constant theme, a drumbeat spanning hundreds of episodes of the show, hundreds of segments.Īnd I'll give you one example, which we can come back to. And what we found was that the elements that he borrows and sands down from the far right are not just, you know, kind of isolated incidents on the show or things he pops into here and there. It's a lot of watching Tucker Carlson and reading transcripts of the show. You could pick almost any show and find one.īut more importantly, the things that we honed in on to back up our claim - and it's a big one, that this may be the most racist show in the history of cable news - was a close look that my colleagues anchored on the graphics desk of the New York Times, looking at every single episode of the show through the end of last year. On many occasions, I asked myself, so what is Carlson correct about on his show, and what's he wrong about on the facts - not on the opinions but on the facts? And what we found, first of all, was just a long pattern of overhyping and wrong facts and misleading statements on the show. I mean, this is what political ads are all about, right? I'm wondering, as you undertook this examination, what did you do to make sure you were capturing not just his worst moments but the heart of his messages?ĬONFESSORE: Well, I thought it was important to capture his whole story. But I think you can't understand how we got to this moment in American politics, especially on the right, without understanding the journey of a person like Tucker Carlson and without understanding the influence he has in Fox, outside of Fox, on politics generally and how much his voice has helped shape what is now the MAGA movement, the Trump movement, and how important a voice he is in that movement.ĭAVIES: You know, you can take pretty much anyone who - in public life, in politics or the media - who has a long record of public utterances and, you know, cherry pick their most intemperate comments and make them look bad. What made you want to take a deep dive into Tucker Carlson?ĬONFESSORE: That's a great question. Thank you.ĭAVIES: You've done a lot of political reporting, campaign finance reporting. NICHOLAS CONFESSORE: It's great to be here. Nicholas Confessore, welcome back to FRESH AIR. His series, called "American Nationalist," is available on the Times website. He's won or shared in a host of journalistic honors, including a Pulitzer Prize and the George Polk Award. Nicholas Confessore is a political and investigative reporter for The Times and a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine. Confessore's articles include some surprising details, such as the fact that Carlson hosts many of his shows from a town in rural Maine where he has a home and a studio. Our guest, New York Times reporter Nicholas Confessore, recently wrote a series of articles about Carlson drawing on an analysis of more than 1,100 episodes of his show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight," conducted by Confessore and a team of Times reporters as well as interviews with dozens of current and former Fox executives, producers and journalists.Ĭonfessore concludes that Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news and, by some measures, the most successful. He's known for praising authoritarian leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and warning his viewers about the dangers of foreign immigrants and elites who want to control their lives. If you follow cable TV at all, you probably know that Fox News host Tucker Carlson is one of the most influential commentators in conservative media and one of the most provocative. I'm Dave Davies, in today for Terry Gross.
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