The Disgusting Tucker Carlson

Ben Smith’s latest piece in the New York Times confirms that Tucker Carlson really is one truly evil bastard.

by Ben Cohen

Last week on The Banter Podcast, Mike Luciano and I discussed Tucker Carlson’s latest repellent conspiracy theory about the January 6th insurrection (more on that later). During the conversation, Mike reminded me that back in 2020 I had warned readers of Carlson’s growing power and influence in Republican circles, and pegged him as the most dangerous face of the growing White Nationalist movement in America. With Carlson’s latest little pantomime fueling yet more hatred and anger on the right, my prediction Mike recalled, was unfortunately coming true.

A stunning article published in The New York Times this week has provided terrifying insight into Carlson’s professional life, where he simultaneously promotes dangerous conspiracies to his audience of angry white men, while feeding inside stories to journalists in the liberal media. Carlson’s Sith like control over the MAGA masses is now turning out to be more insidious than you could ever imagine.

I have always believed that Carlson has been playing a very twisted game with the political and media elite, but Ben Smith’s latest piece in the Times confirms the very worst of my suspicions. Carlson really is one truly evil bastard. His unique role in post-MAGA America is having a chilling effect on politics, and I now fear he is amassing unprecedented levels of influence and power that could have deadly consequences in the near future.

A conspiracy theory for fools

According to Carlson, the FBI was actually responsible for the attempted coup, not the tinfoil hat QAnon zealots and MAGA terrorists who broadcast themselves live on social media doing it. As Aaron Blake summarizes in the Washington Post, the False Flag theory circulating in right wing circles is so stupid it isn’t worth paying any attention to:

Carlson’s theory is essentially that the presence of unindicted co-conspirators in the Capitol riot indictments means those people are government agents and that this, in turn, means the FBI was involved in organizing the riot. The idea has since caught on with conspiratorially minded congressional Republicans….

The theory follows Carlson’s well-established style of asking extremely suggestive questions with little basis in evidence — and which are easily disputed — and then treating the answers he likes as fact to build a narrative he prefers.

Carlson of course doesn’t believe a word of what he is saying, but he does know what effect it will have on the conservative base.

How to control the mob

During the Trump years, Carlson helped successfully transform regular conservatives into conspiratorially minded fruitcakes loyal to the Mad King. Carlson’s formula was simple: blames liberals for everything wrong with America in order to cover up the crimes of the Trump administration. In the post truth Trump world, Carlson had great latitude to feed his audience all sorts of conspiratorial nonsense without repercussion.

This latest piece of red meat tenderized for his audience however, is uniquely dangerous.

If the FBI is to blame for Jan. 6th, then Donald Trump’s much vaunted “Deep State” really is the terrifying power the Alt Right believe it is. Not only are the QAnon believers and Trump loyalists innocent, but it was in fact the evil forces of government in cahoots with the Democrats and Joe Biden. Carlson’s dangerous new theory is designed to not only agitate his audience while ridding them of any responsibility over the events of January 6th, but prime them for another violent assault on the government at some point.

Why is Carlson doing this? My guess is that in his latest incarnation as a Trump apologist/ethno-nationalist, Carlson has come to truly understand the power of the mob. Carlson witnessed the implosion of the GOP under the weight Trump’s fascist movement, and saw the total acquiescence of conservative media up close. Colleagues, confidants and co-workers fell into line because they were genuinely scared. Carlson saw an opportunity to side with that mob, and now he has learned to control them.

Still a friend of the elite

While fanning the flames of White Nationalism and wild Q-adjacent conspiracy theories, Carlson, it turns out, has been amicably passing on conservative secrets to his liberal chums in the media. As Smith reports in the Times:

Mr. Carlson, a proud traitor to the elite political class, spends his time when he’s not denouncing the liberal media trading gossip with them. He’s the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J. Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr. Carlson himself).

I won’t talk here about any off-the-record conversations I may have had with him. But 16 other journalists (none from The Times; it would put my colleagues in a weird position if I asked them) told me on background that he has been, as three of them put it, “a great source.”

“In Trump’s Washington, Tucker Carlson is a primary supersecret source,” the media writer and Trump chronicler Michael Wolff writes in his forthcoming collection of essays, “Too Famous.” Mr. Wolff, who thanked Mr. Carlson in the acknowledgments of his 2018 book, “Fire and Fury,” explained, “I know this because I know what he has told me, and I can track his exquisite, too-good-not-to-be-true gossip through unsourced reports and as it often emerges into accepted wisdom.”

It was barely reported that Carlson thought Trump was completely incompetent and that his administration was doomed all the way back in 2018. He revealed his secret thoughts to a Swiss newspaper of all places, no doubt calculating that only media insiders and real political junkies would pay any attention to it (MAGAs after all, don’t speak Swiss). Carlson has been playing both sides for quite some time knowing full well that most of his audience is too dimwitted to catch him, and the rest believe he is a mastermind committed to furthering the needs of white Europeans.

Smith’s piece however, reveals that Carlson really isn’t on their side. Carlson, it turns out, is a really just a self promoting charlatan riding the wave of White Nationalism for as long as he can with a stellar backup plan should it all go wrong. As Smith notes:

Mr. Carlson’s comfortable place inside Washington media, many of the reporters who cover him say, has taken the edge off some of the coverage. It has also served as a kind of insurance policy, they say, protecting him from the marginalization that ended the Fox career of his predecessor, Glenn Beck, who also drew a huge audience with shadowy theories of elite conspiracy.

“It’s so unknown in the general public how much he plays both sides,” marveled one reporter for a prominent publication who speaks to Mr. Carlson regularly.

Carlson’s position is one of real power: he controls the MAGA mob while maintaining close ties to those he pretends to rail against. This means he terrifies the GOP establishment while being extremely useful to liberal media pundits who rely on his inside intel.

He is in many ways completely unassailable at this point.

This can all go horribly wrong

The problem with saddling up to White Nationalist movements is that they can, and will resort to violence at some point. January 6th was something of a trial run that went spectacularly badly, but there is no indication that ethno-nationalist movements in America are abating. To the contrary, they appear to be gaining steam and have now infiltrated the Republican Party at the very highest levels. Observers of GOP politics have been increasingly alarmed by its rapid transformation into a party that focuses almost exclusively on White grievance politics. The Biden administration is making White terrorist groups a national priority, and for good reason.

Tucker Carlson clearly sees what is happening and is now upping the ante with increasingly crazy rhetoric to ensure his relevance with Trump’s base. Unfortunately for the rest of us this means the culture war in America is becoming ever more deadly. Carlson might be able to escape to his rural mansion in Maine, but society has to deal with the conflict he continues to pour gasoline on.

The new information we have learned about Carlson’s double life won’t bring him down, but it is a crucial blow against him. Carlson is a malevolent actor who has learned to manipulate centers of power in American politics for his own ends. The more these games are exposed, the more difficult it becomes for him to play them.

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A Tale Of Drugs, Pain, And Sleep Deprivation

Come with on my first surgery ever as I learn about pain pills, post-op infections, and what happens when you don’t ask questions.

by Justin Rosario

In just a few weeks, I’ll be turning 48 so I thought to myself back at the end of May, “Hey! Wouldn’t this be a good time to get my very first surgery?!” That was not quite my thought process but, up until Wednesday, June 9, 2021, I had never had a single surgical procedure of any kind. Not even dental. Luck of the Irish, right? Except I’m not Irish and my total ignorance about post-op life made it way worse than it should have been.

Come with me on a magical journey of drugs, pain, and sleep deprivation as I learn many lessons that will leave you scratching your head and wondering, “Are you serious with this?”

Oh, I wish I were not.

Such A Promising Start…

I had (oh, I do so love using the past tense for that) a deviated septum. That is the little piece inside your nose between your nostrils and when it is deviated, it can pinch off the airflow. You know what it’s like when your nose is stuffy? Imagine that for your entire life except you can never ever blow your nose hard enough to clear it out. 

My nose was not completely obstructed but it was like trying to breathe through a tiny straw. Hence, I had (had!!!!) to do most of my breathing through my mouth. This made eating a whole lot less fun than it should be. I never actually had a choking episode where someone had to save my life, knock on wood. I have, however, had enough close calls  that if you asked me to list my top 5 ways I imagined I would die, choking to death on a piece of food or gum would be #1.

I have been meaning to do something about this for years and actually went to an ENT back in the early 2000s. But instead of listening to a word I said, the ENT told me I had sleep apnea and sent me on my way. I do, in fact, have sleep apnea (which I had never heard of at the time) and that was a vitally useful diagnosis, but it had nothing to do with my deviated septum. It took me months to get the sleep apnea stuff sorted out, though, and several more months to get used to using a CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) machine, the device that lets me sleep. By the time that was all done, I let the nose thing fade into the background.

I started to entertain the idea of taking another run at an ENT a few years ago but I put it off again and again and again. Then Covid put everything off. Once I got my vaccine, though, I started taking care of stuff I’d been delaying for far too long, my nose being near the top of the list. I found an ENT, made an appointment, and in I went.

Dr. Chen is...nice enough, I suppose. He is one of those “fast fast fast” doctors which can sometimes be good but not so much if it’s your first surgery. That became a problem later. After an initial consultation and attempt to use nose sprays as a remedy, Dr. Chen agreed that surgery was the next step. He asked when I thought I might like to schedule the surgery and I said sometime in September. I assumed I would be laid up for a week or more and now that we all have our vaccines, my family and I have a very busy summer ahead of us. 

“I have a cancellation. How about next Wednesday?”

“Uhhhhh...OK?”

And that is how I went from planning on having a surgery three months in the future to having it less than a week later. Still, I got all of my ducks in a row. My wife, Debbie took a few days off from work and I got a physical, a rapid Covid test, and my blood work done. The only roadblock was my regular doctor would not send in the paperwork. Their office is extremely disorganized which is not usually a problem but time was of the essence.

After they told me to call back and then gave me an attitude for calling back, they hung up on the pre-op nurse from the surgical center. Then they screened her calls and the calls from the ENT’s office, who they also hung up on. They were deeply unamused by this. This went on for hours.

In the end, I pulled out the big guns: Debbie. She has been an Administrative Assistant for twenty seven years and she has worked for the USDA, the Navy, the Army, The DEA, and the Marines. She can either sweet-talk you to get what she wants or, if you are an asshole, put on the professional voice she uses to deal with testosterone-laden agents and military brass. Then she will make you squirm until you give her what she is demanding and you feel compelled to apologize for not doing it sooner. The faxes were sent over, I kid you not, less than fifteen minutes after I got off the phone with my very intimidating wife. From there, I was all set for my first surgery….

This is an excerpt of today’s Members Only piece. Continue reading here and get a 2 month free trial on a Banter Membership!: