It was actually much creepier than that. Here’s an excerpt from David Corn’s newsletter on that interview:
[N]o one is more cynical than Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News golden boy.
As you know, Trump eschewed the debate and instead sat down for an interview with Carlson that was posted on the Social Media Site Formerly Known as Twitter. It was tough to watch. Such profound toadyism is unnerving, even when coming from a champion charlatan, such as Carlson. As Donald Trump reiterated the same ol’ false complaint—“The election was rigged. It was a rigged election…. They used Covid to cheat…. We have so much on it. It’s like so easy”—Carlson gazed at him adoringly. There was no retort from the interviewer.
But we know, thanks to the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox, that Carlson didn’t buy Trump’s bunk. In private messages revealed during that case, Carlson indicated he didn’t accept the Trump team’s claims that the 2020 election was marred by rampant fraud. He also repeatedly expressed his disdain for Trump. In one text message, he said, “I hate him passionately.” In another, written on January 4, 2021, he wrote, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights” and that “I truly can’t wait.” He called Trump’s four years as president a “disaster.”
Carlson shared none of his anti-Trump sentiments at the time with his Fox viewers. On air, he hailed Trump as a “great” president. For obvious reasons. One message he sent in the post-2020 election period shows that he feared speaking the truth about Trump. Trump’s talent, he wrote, is to “destroy things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.” That is, sucking up to Trump—and his devoted following—was the business plan for Carlson and Fox. If Fox had acknowledged that Trump lost and was lying, it would have pissed off its audience, and viewers would have fled. So screw the truth. It’s all just propaganda for profit.
Now Carlson is pretending that he was not exposed as a total fraud. And he’s back to serving King Con.
This is hardly surprising, given Carlson’s record as a white supremacy-pushing, Putin-supporting disinformationalist. But an episode like this shows us just how debased the political culture of the right has become. Carlson, whose misogyny apparently triggered his firing, pays no price within the conservative cosmos for his rampant phoniness. He remains in good standing, as long as he keeps slinging the Trumpish swill. Especially when the Trump rubes—trubes?—want to keep being rubed.
Actually, allowing Trump to spread the Big Lie once more was hardly the worst of Carlson’s transgressions during his sit-down with the most indicted ex-president in US history. (Yes, the only indicted ex-president.) Early in the chat, Carlson asked Trump a dangerous question:
I’m looking at the trajectory since 2015 when you got into politics for real and then won. It started with protests against you…by the left, and then it moved to impeachment twice, and now indictment. The next stage is violence. Are you worried they’re going to try to kill you? Why wouldn’t they try to kill you?
Here Carlson was suggesting that Trump’s political foes are conspiring to kill Trump. In a divided country at a divisive moment, this is reckless and irresponsible. He was fueling hatred and paranoia. Imagine the actions that Trump devotees might consider if they were convinced Democrats, liberals, prosecutors, the media, and others were bent on killing Trump?
Trump, of course, played along with this nonsense and referred to his opponents as “savage animals. They are people who are sick, really sick.” Carlson, who seemingly detests Trump when off-camera, was hailing him as a grand martyr for America and pushing a false storyline with potentially horrendous consequences.
The Trump-Carlson lovefest was full of inanities. As Carlson beamed at his pal, Trump, who spent a gazillion hours on golf courses while he was president, derided President Joe Biden for taking a trip to the beach and called him a “Manchurian candidate” controlled by China. For his part, Carlson said of Vice President Kamala Harris, “she seems pretty senile.” (What?) At one point, Trump did speak a truth: “We have a country that’s very fragile now.” Indeed. And both Trump and Carlson are brazenly exploiting that fragility for their own benefit, with no regard for the perils they provoke. Two peas in a rotten pod.