Rick Wilson

0:00Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Jamba. Jump in at JambaCasino.com. Let's Jamba. No purchase necessary, VTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC, 21 Plus, sponsored by JambaCasino. I'm Tucker Carlson, and this is Do You Trust Me? Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped and battle hearted. There is not a liberal America, any conservative America, there is the United States of America. Hey folks, it's Rick Wilson. Welcome back to The Lincoln Project Podcast. I'm your host, as always, and I am delighted to be joined today by Jason Zengerly, who is the author of a book called Hated by All the Right People.

1:01And it's an unauthorized biography of Tucker Carlson, a one of the most divisive, intriguing, weird, horrible figures in this landscape of ours that has been reshaped so fundamentally in the era of Fox News, in the era of social media. And Tucker Carlson is a sort of Zellig on the American right. For you, those of you not old enough to remember Zellig, go look it up. Zellig, though, was a guy who was always up around. And I knew Tucker back as early as the 90s in DC. And he was always sort of a jolly kind of nihilist guy on the right. He wasn't really particularly hot ideologically. He was a player. He was an interesting guy, like to make him money. He was kind of a fun figure. And he's transformed into something much, much different. And Jason's new book is a recounting of how Tucker has transformed himself from that sort of a good boot version basic bench right wing writer

2:03into this incredibly divisive figure on the right. And Jason, I want to thank you for coming on today. And tell us how you describe the arc of Tucker Carlson in his career and his new ideological predicates that seem to be this final form of the Tucker Carlson evolution. Yeah, Tucker 6.0 maybe. There's been a lot of forms. I mean, I, I mean, I wanted to write about him and his arc because I think it's a good way to write about just the incentive structures that exist in conservative media and conservative politics. And, you know, those are, he is responding to those. So very much so. When you met him back in the 90s, you know, he was, I was probably right before he was, you know, made the, the right host of Crossfire, which I guess people don't remember Zellig. They probably don't remember Crossfire either. But, you know, is this, this sort of venerable debate show on CNN and there was a host on the right and a host on the left.

3:04And Tucker was, you know, it was his job to be kind of the mouthpiece for mainstream conservatism and, and for the Bush administration. Yeah, basically the George W Bush administration. And, and that was how kind of, you know, you know, that was how conservative media worked at that point. I mean, that was like the best job you could have, sort of being that mouthpiece and then he did it well. And, and then John Stewart came on that show and spanked him, nuked, nuked the show, and nuked Tucker and that sort of sent his career a new bit of a tailspin. Welcome back to Crossfire. We're talking to John Stewart who's just lecturing us that are morally inferiority. John, you're bumming us out. Tell us, what do you think of the Bill O'Reilly vibrator story? No. I'm sorry. I don't. I'm here to confront you because we need help from the media and they're hurting us. I made a special effort to come on the show today because I have mentioned this show as being a bad.

4:04It's not so much that it's bad as it's hurting America. So I wanted to come here today. Let me, and say, wait, wait, wait. I just want, let me, here's just what I wanted to tell you guys. Yeah. Stop. Stop, stop, stop. Stop hurting America. I watch your show every day, and it kills me. I can tell you a lot of it. It's so, oh, it's so painful to watch. You're partisan, what do you call it? Hacks. Wait, John, wait. You have a responsibility to the public discourse. And you've failed. You've failed, John. It is really. I think you're a good comedian. I think your lectures are boring. You're on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What is wrong with you? It's someone who watches your show and cannot take it anymore. I just can't. You failed. You failed, John. It's miserable. I think. You need to go to one. No, this is theater. I mean, it's obvious. How old are you? 35. And you wear a bow tie. Yeah, I do.

5:04I do so. I need to show it all. I do think you're more fun on your show. Oh, that's my opinion. Okay. John's group has won. You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show. He was in the wilderness for a while. And I think he was trying to reinvent himself in all sorts of ways. Some ways that existed outside of politics. I mean, he was trying to be a game show host for a little while. Yep. I'm Tucker Carlson. And this is Do You Trust Me? This is a game of skill, chance, and trust. Right now, you're just 12 questions away from up to $2 million. But eventually he got the idea. He was a very good writer. And I think before he was at CNN, he was an excellent magazine writer. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that was just such a sort of flagship publication for American conservatism. And its staff was really just top notch, founded by Bill Crystal and Jonathan Erats.

6:06From Fred Fred Barnes. Yeah. I mean, Fred David Brooks. Charles Crowdhamer. You know, Tucker was a junior writer there, but he was really good. He might have actually been the best pure writer on staff. So, yeah. When he started out, he wanted to be a writer, then power shifted to television. He goes to television. And then when he eventually flames out at CNN and MSNBC, then he starts a website. You know, and again, it's kind of all sort of sticking with the tenor of the times. Right? Web stuff was really popular in 2010. And he had this idea that he wanted it to be like, he wanted the daily caller. Originally, he wanted to be kind of like the New York Times of the right. Yeah. Yeah, this, you know, this focus on accuracy and reporting facts and all. He quickly discovered that there was no audience for that. So, he pivoted and he turned it into a far right publication that got into sort of a war with Breitbar, basically, in pursuit of clicks. Like, who could be more extreme on immigration? Who could be more extreme on race? And, you know, again, sort of responding. Spoiler, right?

7:06Bart will always win that race. Exactly. It was kind of, it was like a race to the bottom that it was never going to win. But the thing that the daily caller did, and I think this is actually really kind of important to understanding Tucker's, you know, latest sort of iteration, is it showed him what conservative voters actually wanted. And it made him aware of the gap that existed between what the Republican establishment thought they wanted and what they actually wanted. Because just looking at web traffic, like he saw the articles that people clicked on. Sure. And they were articles that, you know, were about nasty immigrants on the border, about black and white crime. You know, and coming out of the 2012 election when Romney lost to Obama, most Republicans thought that they needed to become a more moderate party, especially things like immigration. And that was sort of the operating thesis of Jeb Bush going into 2016. Sure was. Tucker was the, he was at Fox at this point. It was like the one cable network he hadn't worked at, Fox hired him. But they hired him as like a third tier pundit.

8:06He was, you know, hosting the weekend morning show, weekend Fox and friends. Just, you know, pretty like dark and lonely work. And Fox had this basic problem when Trump launched his campaign in the sense that none of their pundits took him seriously. They all thought it was a side show. They all thought he was going to get destroyed. And they had like a basic television problem of producing debate segments about him, because they couldn't get, Cam were ready, articulate human beings to come on and say something, you know, if not positive about Trump, at least not negative. And Tucker, you know, because of the daily caller, like he recognized that Trump, Trump was going to have a lane. You know, if you're a nativist candidate running on white grievance, which everybody, every, every other conservative pundit thought was, you know, a non-starter, Tucker was like, actually, there's some people out there who would like this. It doesn't sound like the other candidate, it doesn't act like the other candidates. And this is baffled the Republicans, obviously. What's going on? It's like, it's like inside Joker going to rear with their panel. We want in. What do you laugh at, Tucker? No one's ever seen anything like that. I mean, no one alive today has ever seen a candidate like Donald Trump.

9:08He's just an animal. He's just completely unleashed. Those people are disgusting. They're calling reporters, disgusting. Cory Lewandowski, his campaign manager, who's despised by many people in the press, who's under criminal investigation. He's right here next to me. I mean, he's just, he's just an animal force. He's just all-id. Partly explains the opposition to him. I mean, he really is a threat, a real threat, an actual threat to the livelihoods of many Republicans who live in Washington. And he was able to take that insight and get more airtime on Fox, and eventually, you know, get a primetime show out of it. And I think in all those instances, you kind of see him, I mean, the Daily Caller was a little different in the sense that it kind of gave him insight into conservative voters. But he's really just kind of like going along with what, you know, what conservative media is rewarding at that point. Right. And there, that emergence in as a lot of these conservative media outlets moved away from the old national review, and even the proto-weekly standard magazine model

10:08to move to that online model. And a lot of ways, Tucker is the story of being able to see the data what your audience wants. In real time. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And so he goes to Fox. He becomes a very prominent voice at Fox. And I heard from people around Tucker. And even in like the early stages of Trump's 16 campaign, that Tucker was still sort of eye-rolling him in the back. Oh, yeah. He's an asshole. The guy's a loud mouth. But, you know, he could do this. And Carlson then became very much inflected toward the white nationalist sort of demographic replacement theories and was trying to sort of ship them into the Fox narrative. Telloretic here from 2311 Racing. Game night's fun until someone spends five minutes lining up one shot. Chalk, breathe, re-chalk, still aiming. While they figure it out, I fire up Trump a casino.

11:08I can spin anywhere, anytime. And there's always a new social casino game every week. Spins happen way faster than that shot. Play now at chumbacasino.com. Let's chumbac. Sponsored by Chumbacasino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Fortware prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply. The great replacement theory is coming from the left. They don't think it's a theory. They think it's real. To change the racial mix of the country. That's the reason to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here and dramatically increased the proportion of Americans newly arrived from the Third World. In political terms, this policy is called the Great Replacement, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far away country. 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.

12:08Let's just say it. That's true. I talked to people at Fox in the 18-19 time frame, where there was still even some concern from Rupert that some of this stuff was too crazy. Some of this stuff was too conspiratorial. How did the tensions at Fox for Tucker start to build up over time? Because that's the story. I don't think a lot of people have really walked through. He got his prime time show after Ails had been fired. After Roger Ails had been fired. Roger Ails, a giant figure behind the scenes in television and the GOP, has been ousted from his job as a head of Fox News Channel in the wake of a sexual harassment lawsuit by a former Fox News anchor. And tonight, Rupert Murdoch himself is stepping in. Roger Ails, one of the most powerful men in news and politics, is out. The former Fox News chairman and CEO toppled following accusations of sexual harassment. First made in a lawsuit brought by former anchor Gretchen Carlson. Then this week reports that Fox star Megan Kelly told investigators Ails harassed her

13:12when she was a young correspondent in Washington. The 76-year-old Ails denied the charges. Today in his resignation letter to Rupert Murdoch, head of parent company 21st Century Fox, Ails made no apologies and congratulated himself, writing, he takes particular pride in the role that I have played advancing the careers of the many women I have promoted. On the night of his downfall, the party Ails spent much of his life promoting, struggles to unify behind its most bombastic candidate, Donald Trump. It was interesting, like talking to people at Fox, who were not necessarily Roger Ails fans, but they all, or, you know, they would sort of, you know, offer the requisite throw clearing. They know we did horrible things, but they would, but they would say, you know, if Roger were still here, this would not be happening with Tucker. Because Ails always had this rule that, you know, no one was bigger than the network. The network was the star, and Tucker became bigger than the network. And he was able to get away with things that other anchors would never have been allowed to do under Ails.

14:15And I think, I mean, the thing that you mentioned about sort of smuggling these fringe ideas on to Fox and sort of, they're poor smuggling them into the conservative mainstream. I think that's super important. And I think that's actually, was probably the most important part of his show. Because he, he was able to kind of introduce, you know, theories and arguments, and sometimes even just news stories, to the median 70-something Fox viewer, and present the, present them to that viewer in such a kind of like slightly watered down, more palatable, seemingly more reasonable form, that, you know, a changed mainstream conservatism. Like, I mean, I would think that, I would like to think at least that if you were, the average Fox viewer encountering replacement theory in its raw original form, like on the daily store or website or whatever, would be repulsed by it and would say, this is not okay. After it's gone through the cycle of Tucker kind of putting his spin on it and, you know, lending his credibility to it and sort of his, you know, his kind of incredulousness.

15:16How can you say this is a thing, you know, that, I think that, that made that, it made that, that theory, you know, palatable to, to mainstream conservatives and made them believe in it, to the extent that I think now, you know, it seems like that's kind of a mainstream view now on the right. This, you know, pretty, like, I would say it has become very much in the, I have to even call it the right anymore because it's sort of this hyperpopulism that has become mainstream. Majority in MAGA, I guess. Yeah, in the MAGA world, that is very much a mainstream view. Yeah. Ironically, even among MAGA folks who are not white, which blows my freaking mind. Yeah. Yeah. So as he is at, in the, in the end stages of his Fox career, he's also beginning to mainstream another idea into the, into the MAGA base, which is that Vladimir Putin is the good guy. That Russia is the savior of white conservative family values,

16:18Christian Christianity, anti LGBT stuff. But is there another reason we should side with Ukraine over Russia? Russia is a much more significant country by every match. Why is it disloyal to side with Russia, but loyal to side with Ukraine? Well, threat. Why would we take Ukraine's side? Why would we have Russia's side? I don't, I'm totally confused. Isn't so much. Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? I should say for the record, I'm totally opposed to these sanctions. And I don't think that we should be at war with Russia. And I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine. That is my view. And I'm serious. Like, I don't understand why. And why shouldn't I root for Russia? Which I am. Do you have any insight in this on where Tucker started to adopt those sort of Duganite ideas? I know he likes Dugan. I've heard that from him. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah. That was, because that's my answer. And it's such an unsatisfying answer.

17:19And I really wish that I had, I tried in the reporting for the book to figure out the Russia stuff. And it always came back to Dugan, I don't know is like the best answer. I mean, there are all sorts of crazy theories out there about about him and Russia, you know, that he's on the take and intelligence off and all this stuff. And I could find nothing about. I don't. I've looked at him more. I think he sees that as an opportunistic thing. Just my gut tells me that I don't have any evidence of that either. But. But there wasn't. Yeah. You know, Bannon was inspired. Tucker. Yeah. I mean, the other thing is, you know, and I don't think you can discount this is the degree of his resentment towards, you know, the Neocons and Bill Crystal and all. I think a lot of this stuff starts out as just picking a fight with people he doesn't like and picking and knowing that this is going to piss them off. And I think actually some of the Israel stuff started off in that vein too.

18:20It's obviously like metastasized into something very different now. But that that was a new origin. That was my next question is like, I've had a lot of people say to me, I never once heard Tucker ever do anything would be like a normal basic conservative on the subject of Israel until after he left Fox and it just went from zero to zero to where they're really six million Jews killed. A conservative commentator Tucker Carlson is facing backlash tonight for comments he made at Charlie Kirk's Memorial Sunday in Arizona. Tonight Jewish groups and Israeli media say Carlson promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories during his speech. So it's about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem and Jesus shows up and he starts talking about the people in power and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do which is telling the truth about people and they hate it and they just go bonkers.

19:22They hate it and they become obsessed with making him stop. This guy's got to stop talking. We've got to shut this guy up. And I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamplit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us. We must make him stop talking. And there's always one guy with the bright idea and I could just hear him say, I've got an idea. Why don't we just kill him? That'll shut him up. That'll fix the problem. Carlson compared Kirk's death to the crucifixion of Jesus, describing a scene of people plotting the silence Jesus. Critics say this evoked harmful blood libel tropes and modern Israeli stereotypes, prominent figures including former Israeli officials, condemned Carlson's remarks, calling them offensive and dangerous. So far, no reaction or comment from Tucker Carlson. The conspiratorial shit that I've heard him talking, I've heard people say that he talks about in small groups and stuff that is now overtly out there about.

20:29And look, I am no BB Netanyahu sympathizer. I helped run a campaign to try to defeat him in 2021. But he has tried mightily now, I think, to mainstream the anti-Semitism that is, I would not say it's definitional in Mog. There's still a divide there. Oh yeah, there's the Christian nationalist types who still are the all-in. But I'm curious like how you trace that development in the book. The Jewish stuff is interesting, because he starts at the weekly standard, which is kind of a Jewish magazine. Yeah, I'll tell you a bit. I mean, Bill Crystal and Panaris, by Fred Barnes. I mean, that's the answer. Tucker now is like recondent and said, oh, Bill Crystal hates Christians. And it's like he founded a magazine with Fred Barnes, and he used to be a nation with Gary Bauer, I don't think he hates Christians. But Tucker very much went along with that. I mean, he used to joke. He called himself an Episcopalian Neocon.

21:29And Episcopalian Neocon loves Israel. He would say that back when he was there. I don't think you can discount the impact Iraq had on him. And the war in Iraq. And I think that was a sincere ideological transformation on his part. I think that he was not a strong believer in going to war there. But the people he liked were really strong believers in it, and he trusted them, and he went along with it. And he had some private doubts that he suppressed, and he came to really regret that. So say it, we all on the right. Yeah. But to his credit, he disavowed his support early in the war. He was like nine months, and did it. And I think there are some people who never did that. And more than just disavowing it, I do think he tried to wrestle with, okay, how did I get this wrong? How did the people I trust get this wrong? Right.

22:29And it made him reevaluate them. So like, you know, what else to build crystal and John McCain get wrong? And then I think, furthermore, he started to say, okay, what are the people that my friends have told me are wrong? And, you know, wrong about everything. What, you know, like Pat, you can in first and foremost, to public enemy, public enemy number one, for the weekly standard in the Neocons. Like, what is he right about? And you start to see him kind of shift a little bit, you know, even back then on immigration and on trade. So I think there is like a genuine kind of paleo conservative view that he has on foreign policy and on interventionism. And Israel becomes part of that, in the sense that, you know, it's the same way it is for Buchanan's. This idea that they're manipulating the United States. And you could see some of that even on Fox. You could see some of, you know, he, it was subtle, or sometimes even wasn't that subtle. I mean, it was, I mean, some of it was just like, he would, you know, he would do dog whistles, not even so much on Israel, but on Jewish stuff. Like, you know, he would offer this incredibly, I call it like kind of cogent and persuasive critique of private equity.

23:32But he would owe it to the two people he would always mention were Paul Singer and Bill Ackman. Like, if you're only going to pick Jewish financiers to like go after any, and you would contrast Paul Singer with Henry Ford. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Chamba. Jump in at chambacasino.com. Let's Chamba. No purchase necessary. BTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC. 21 plus. Sponsored by Chamba Casino. If you spend any time driving around America recently, you may have noticed that an awful lot of the country seems to have shriveled up and died. This is your country now. Shuddered car dealerships next to defunct restaurants across street from thrift stores and methadone clinics. That's America. Community after community. Descicated. Empty husks with nothing left. Huge swaths in the United States look like that now. So what happened? Well, a lot of things happened. Some of them are complicated and hard to change. But one of the big factors in the slow-moving disaster is the utter transformation of the way our leaders think about the

24:34American economy. During the last-gilded age, 125 years ago, America's ruling class may have been ostentatiously rich. And they were. Go to Newport, Rhode Island for proof, if you like. But it was still a recognizably American class. Tycoons accumulated fortunes, but they also felt some obligation to the country around them. In January of 1914, Henry Ford more than doubled the prevailing factory wage to then remarkable $5 for an eight-hour day. Ford didn't have to do that, but his company was succeeding any thought he should. It is nearly impossible to imagine a big company doing anything like that today. Attitudes are just too different. Your average finance mogul looks at workers merely as cost to be reduced or eliminated entirely. Private equity isn't building a lot of public libraries these days. Instead, the model is ruthless economic efficiency. It has made a small number of people phenomenally rich. One of them is a New York-based hedge fund manager called Paul Singer, according to Forbes, has amassed a personal fortune of more than $3 billion.

25:35How was Singer made that money? We made a lot of it by purchasing sovereign debt from financially distressed countries, countries that were in trouble, usually at a massive discount. Once a country's economy regained some stability, Singer would bombard its government with lawsuits, from a massive public relations campaign, originating here in Washington, sometimes, until he made his money back with interest. The practice is called vulture capitalism feeding off the carcass of a dying nation. In some ways, it's not so different from what Singer and his firm, Elliott Management, have done in this country and to this country. Stuff like that, that kind of stuff he was even doing at Fox, but I think you're right. There were still, as big as he got in his many lines as he crossed there, there were still some that he couldn't cross, and that was one of them. And then as soon as he left Fox, I think he was just kind of unleashed. And, you know, it's the way beyond dog whistles now. And the Israel stuff, it's just a through line in all the shows now. It just comes up on the most unrelated topics.

26:36It's just such a front of mind issue for him now. I watched a few episodes recently and I was in a rabbit hole on the post Fox life of many of these people like Megan Kelly and Tucker. And it seems to me that in some ways, he's back at that at the same thing he did to differentiate the weekly standard in the market back then, which was to find what the audience was craving. And I'm curious. Tucker financially seems to be doing very well. He seems to have plenty of plenty of audience. Megan Kelly, similarly, plenty of audience. When he's doing this, you know, growing this new brand, which is conspiratorial, which is pro Putin, which is pro Orban rushes bad. Right. Kind of hard to say that after Venezuela.

27:37And it's tiresome anyway. So Russia is not bad or good. Russia is essential to the United States. We cannot survive a global conflict. If Russia and China are aligned against us. Period. And it couldn't be more simple. And it shouldn't be very hard at this point. To make that deal. There's no reason to pay any attention to the unelected leader of Ukraine. Now, the obstacle in the way is not geostrategic. There is no argument for continuing a proxy war, which is what it is. United States versus Russia, we've been at war for four years. All of us are pretending we're not we are. There's no reason to continue that on the basis of America's national interest. That is not an interest and it never has been in our interest. And by the way, Russia is a Christian country. Remarkable country, very serious country. That we have a lot in common with.

28:38Whether you like it or not. Oh, he's bad. Okay. Stop. We need Russia. And the only reason we are not in alliance with Russia is because the foreign public's establishment in the United States, the weapons manufacturers, and particularly the Neocons believe that they said my own Russia I want to retake Russia or something and Putin is in the way. He kicked out the oligarchs. That was gravely offensive. To the American finance establishment and to the American foreign policy establishment. The irony I keep funny is like he seems to be anti authoritarian, except for all the authoritarians. Yeah. Do you look at Tucker having built a new media company around this? Is this just one more stick? Is there some level of this? It's just one more one more play. Is he just being another crafty audience assessor? I think he is being a crafty audience assessor, but I don't think he's doing it just for money or ratings. I mean, I do think it's a mistake to think of him as a media figure anymore.

29:42I think he's a movement leader at this point. And I think he has like an ideological project and a vision for the country that he wants to achieve. And he has like, he's developed a really pretty impressive political and professional radar. And he's very good. I think it's skating to where he thinks the puck is going to be. And I think he, you know, he's so much of the controversy around him now is this debate going on and this fight going on. I don't know what MAGA is going to be when Trump leaves the stage. And I think his vision for MAGA is, you know, this kind of like blood and soil and nationalist populous party that can't succeed unless you have the support of neo-nazis for black and better. It's ironic. He had a long-running fight with Nick Fuentes, right? I mean, he had Nick who, who, as a gree just a character as Nick Fuentes is, has a movement, has a large chunk of those 18 to 30-year-old conservative men

30:43who, who, who, and maybe they, maybe they sort of nod and wink at Fuentes, but they're also in that white nat white populism. Is there white nat curious if nothing else here? White nat curious, yes. They're not quite all, they're not quite weave. They're not quite gone in like, like full daily storm or, but a lot of them are, are, they're comfortable with, with some of the beliefs of Fuentes and certainly of Tucker. So let's talk for one second about sort of two of the Fox alumni, where you've got, you've got Megan Kelly and Tucker, who have gone out into the world. There's also Candace Owens. They seem to be sort of a triumvirate of people, they're not necessarily cooperating anymore, but is, what talks about the tensions in that group? Well, Candace Owens is... Yeah, I mean, you know, you talk about Tucker going a little bit far. I mean, Candace Owens, but the thing that I think both Megan Kelly and Tucker do

31:44is, and Tucker's going to be doing something similar to what he did back when he was Fox, and he was kind of like smuggling the stuff into the mainstream. He's doing that with Candace Owens too. He's kind of like presenting her as more reasonable than she is, or, you know, saying she's just asking questions. You know, you should be allowed to ask these questions. I think Megan Kelly is doing the same thing. And it's just kind of a cop out, I think, for Tucker and Megan Kelly, you know, to sort of not have to say something. I think they're all afraid of like, you know, getting on Candace Owens bad side and getting on the bad side of Candace Owens audience. I mean, I think that a lot of these conservative media figures just live in mortal terror of being out of step with the audience. And I think like you definitely saw that in the text messages and the emails that were uncovered in the Dominion lawsuit. Overnight, a new report about former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's private comments after his bombshell departure from Fox News. In a text message obtained by the New York Times, sent by Carlson to one of his producers

32:45in the hours after the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The host allegedly describes watching a video of a group of people he calls Trump guys violently attacking a quote, antifa kid, calling it dishonorable and adding, it's not how white men fight. Carlson also writing, he found himself rooting for the mob. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it. But then Carlson writes, quote, an alarm went off. This isn't good for me. I'm becoming something I don't want to be. If I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is? The Times reporting that the message was filed in the Dominion lawsuit but remains redacted from public court documents. But the Times reports its contents were disclosed in interviews it conducted with several people who have knowledge of the Dominion voting system's defamation lawsuit against Fox. I think that goes, I think that's going on today. I think Megan Kelly, I don't know, I view her as like a far more cynical person than Tucker Carlson. I think they're playing a different game. Megan Kelly, to me, as someone who's doing this for ratings,

33:47I don't think she has like a political bone in her body. Tucker, I think similarly the way he had to appease Fuentes, you know, where he was fighting with him and then he did have to. And actually, like he picks the fight weirdly enough when Candace Owens was on his show because I guess Candace Owens had some beef with Fuentes. You just interviewed Nick Fuentes or had a conversation with him. What did you think of that? What do you think of him? I mean, I can tell you my experience was entirely fraudulent with him and Nick told his story and I was listening in and said essentially that he was cancelled because he started asking questions about Israel. So I had him on the show, welcomed him into my home. He went great. He left. He said thanks. We can now be friends. And I am not kidding. We published this 11 days later. And he was, I don't even know how to. He just starts screaming, calling me and effing BITCH who set him up. We didn't edit a single thing. Those 11 days, like two weeks before we even published the interview,

34:49we told him if there's anything that he wanted us to insert. Like nobody does that if you go on the show. And it was, it was just the rage that was coming out of him. It was just weird. He told the story. He did all of that. And apparently then, and I, I don't know if it was driven by insecurity. He didn't know how his followers would take the interview. But he just did a complete 180, lied to his audience, pretended that he was surprised. It was behind a paywall. We spoke about him and how we were going to release it. He said great. I mean, it's a totally total 180 flip. So I can now say that I didn't listen to other people say that Nick was a bad person. I didn't care about what happened when he was 18, 19, 22, 26. I sat across from a person had a conversation with him. He behaved one way in person and then put on a show for the internet. So I actually can say my experience with Nick Fuentes is that he's a terrible person and a terrible human being. Because why would you do that? There's no reason to do that. But I think Tucker is just, he doesn't want to lose the, the Candace Owens audience. The same way he doesn't want to lose the Fuentes audience. Because in the, his vision of the Maga movement. Um, it, it can't succeed without those people being part of it. Sure. Do you think as a political figure?

35:49And I had somebody very close to Tucker. Call me a, because about a, about a year and a half ago, I wrote that Tucker could, in fact, run for president. He could, in fact, be a very powerful figure in a divided Maga field. If you've got JD Vance and one of the Trump boys and, and, and, and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who all want to run for Marco, who all want to be president. There's a scenario where Tucker Carlson can win a Republican primary. Looking for excitement? Chamba Casino is here. Play anytime, play anywhere. Play on the train, play at the store, play at home, play when you're bored. Play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in. So why are you waiting for or don't delay? Chamba Casino is free to play. Experience social gameplay like never before. Go to Chamba Casino right now to play hundreds of games, including online slots. So slingo and more. Live the Chamba life at chamba casino.com.

36:52Yeah, I mean, I, for, for the moment, I, I feel like he and Vance are in such ideological lockstep. They're so tight that there's really, he doesn't need to do that. Right. I don't, I don't get, I don't think he has some burning desire to be president. I don't think it's the disease that, it's the disease for which there is no cure. And you can always tell if they really want it. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think this is, you know, I don't think that's the case. But I do think, you know, if Vance were to say, you know, sort of put some ideological distance between himself and Tucker or no earlier, start to disagree with him on stuff. I could see Tucker, you know, being interested in doing it. Or if Tucker were to conclude, and I think this is probably more likely that, you know, the JD Vance just doesn't have what it takes to get elected president. But the idea of that happening before 2028 seems unlikely. And I think that, you know, for all Trump, for all Tucker's influence on Trump, like his relationship with Vance is tighter and it's a much more intellectual relationship. I mean, they, you know, they really like, they just, they just, you know, they, they have the same kind of, you know, theory of politics.

37:58Does he think of himself, I mean, as a kingmaker, do you think? I think he does. Yeah, I do. I mean, he definitely wants to be. I mean, and I think like, I mean, I think one of his, he was fired from Fox. I think he was really thinking that he was going to be the kingmaker in 24 and the Republican primary, that his show, you know, the Republican primary was going to go through his show. It was going to be the Tucker primary. And I think that was one of the reasons he actually, I think, founded his own media company because, you know, he was, because you know, Fox, he was still in their contract at Fox. And he could have just, like, not worked for a year and make $20 million. Sure. I think most of us probably want to do. I'll take that off. I'll take that off. Yeah, but in the attention economy, like, that's, that's not, that's not what work you needed to be out there. Yeah. And, um, he needed, and he really wanted to have a role in the, in that race. And, and you saw him play that. I mean, he basically joined Donald Trump. He wasn't a kingmaker at that point. Right. He was basically just like a warm-up act. I think Donald Trump's singular contribution to this country in the world is by his presence exposing a lot of things.

39:00A lot of things, a lot of us believed as fraudulent as lies. It's changed my life watching it. But the single biggest lie that Donald Trump has exposed is that this is a functional democracy. When, in fact, it's a country oppressed by a small group of its unhappiest citizens for their own benefit. And the promise of this campaign is that Donald Trump will return this country to its owners. And that's its population. That's its people. That's its citizens. And I pray fervently that that happens. I mean it. That's why I'm so honored to be here. Thank you. The way he kind of glued himself to Trump in a way that he didn't when he was still at Fox. I thought, you know, it was, was kind of interesting. I know two of the two of the Republican campaigns in 24, both DeSantis and Haley were desperately working for ways to find to please Tucker Carlson. Oh, really Haley was. Even Haley was. That's interesting. I can see Haley was such. Oh, yeah.

40:00It was like all of us back to. It was basically like, how do we make peace? And we said just like, how do we prove that we're the smarter Trump? Have you ever heard the story about like the, the, the seeds of their animus? Like apparently they were on a hunting trip together. No. And he just developed some like intense dislike for her. This is, you know, like 10 or 15 years ago, it all stems from that. You know, yes. Beaks and politics are over ridiculous shit. Yeah. And then the DeSantis won. I mean, supposedly he, you know, like kicked his dog. And, uh, or his wife suspected that the Santa, the Santa's had like lunch over at Tucker's house in Florida. And he didn't go well. And his wife thought that he'd mistreated their one of their dogs. So yeah. These are the things that make or unmake presidents, I guess. It's crazy. So you, you were at the times for a long time, even at the New Yorker now. You've written some bios of amazing political pieces about folks like Stephen Miller, about folks like Tucker, obviously.

41:03Tucker did not cooperate with this at all. So other folks have cooperated with you to greater or lesser degrees at, at, at presume. What was the attitude of people you were reaching out to who knew him, uh, in talking to Tucker Carlson? We're talking about Tucker Carlson. Among, among sort of, you know, among journalists, I think, among political reporters. Yeah. I think it is like this great preoccupation, this sort of, you know, what, what happened to him? Because he was someone that everybody knew and was friends with. And, you know, and until I was writing the book on Tucker, like, I would talk to him, you know, not infrequently. Um, and he's, he's always been someone he's been very good to talk to. Uh, he's, you know, smart guy. Smart guy. And I always appreciated it as a magazine writer, you know, even though he no longer wrote for magazines, like he retained the muscle memory of a good magazine writer. And so you could, he was actually talking to him, was like talking to like a colleague or, you know, kind of peer conversation.

42:03Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and he would, he would actually be like, oh, like he kind of like would have ideas sometimes for your stories. Like, oh, that's a good idea because I steal that. Um, so I think among journalists, there was like a real sort of interest in discussing, you know, like their thoughts, because I think they're all puzzled by it and wondering, you know, to t-change, did I change? You know, I think inside Fox is such a hard place to report on, uh, could be every so paranoid. Um, but, you know, there was that paranoia. Uh, even after he left, there was some of that paranoia. And then, you know, I think, uh, some people who were close to him, like wanted to talk others didn't, it was just, you know, I think everybody kind of makes their own calculus. I mean, I think he told people, he told some people they could talk to me. Um, I think he told others, maybe not to, but I'm not sure about that. Interesting. Yeah, it was just, you know, the same like with any, any piece, um, any kind of story, you know, there's always, there's just a mixture of motives. And I, you know, in some people, I think we're more interested in the topic than others. If he kind of wanted to know what I thought.

43:04Sure. So what was the most surprising thing in all, in writing this, what was the most surprising thing in all your reporting on this about Tucker? You know, I mentioned it earlier, but his, his, his, his immigration stuff. Um, I was, it was so much, it happened earlier that I realized, like I was reading the transcripts of his MSNBC show, um, which, you know, I don't think anybody watched it the time. Right. But, you know, he was, he would have Pat Buchanan on and, and, and Rachel Maddo was, Rachel Maddo was like his liberal sparring partner. And they would have these arguments about building a wall on the border with Mexico with Tucker and Buchanan saying we should do this, you know, back in 2005, 2006. Um, that, that, it's a small thing, but I was really surprised by that. And it, it made me, I mean, I, I did sort of believe that his ideological transformation was, was real. And it wasn't just totally cynical and it wasn't just because of Donald Trump, but that, that bolstered, by sense of that, because he really, something really did shift with him after Iraq.

44:05And, and Buchanan's influence on him became, you know, really, he basically traded Bill Crystal for Pat Buchanan. Yeah. And that, that was interesting. He's a paleocon of all paleocons. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and even like apologize to Buchanan, you know, because he had, he had sort of joined the chorus, you know, using Buchanan and anti-Semitism and all this stuff back in the day. He wasn't wrong at the time. No, he wasn't. Although now, yeah, no, it's, it's really, it's really fascinating how the wall he's playing right now and the notes he's hitting, you know, with Buchanan talking about Israel and the Amen corner and all that. It's the same thing. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's just, but he's, but there's, you know, the difference is back then there were, there were institutions and there was sort of a mainstream kind of concertism that could, you know, seek to marginalize Buchanan. So push that out, you know, like that, you know, now Tucker saying this stuff and he's more influential than he's ever been. Yeah. I mean, he was, you know, he's at the White House like it seems like almost every week at this point. It is, it is a fascinating, he's a fascinating character in our moment.

45:07Folks, the book is hated by all the right people and Jason Zangerly, thank you so much for coming on the Lincoln Project podcast today. We appreciate your time and appreciate the book folks check it out. Tucker, love him or hate him is a fascinating character and he's playing a massive role in reshaping our politics. Thanks again and we'll talk to you next time. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, another checkered flag for the books time to celebrate with Jamba. Jump in at JambaCasino.com. Let's Jamba. No purchase necessary. BTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC's 21 plus sponsored by Jamba Casino. Ch