Tucker Carlson Told A Grotesque Lie About NYTimes "Doxxing" Him, And Now He's Getting Away With It

Carlson said the Times was trying to endanger him and his family by revealing where they live in a yet to be released story. They weren't.

by Ben Cohen

I’ve written a lot about Tucker Carlson in recent years because of his increasingly prominent role in American politics. As the host of the most popular cable news show on television and unofficial role as a highly effective Trump-whisperer, Carlson wields an extraordinary amount of power in America. His vile brand of Ethno-Nationalism has become extremely popular amongst Republican voters, and Carlson expertly channels their racism and rage into useful political energy for the president.

I believe Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous figure in American politics right now, and his behavior on his show last night reinforces just how sinister he has become. In what can only be described as a grotesquely malicious and dangerous act of deception, Carlson falsely claimed that The New York Times was trying to “terrorize” his family by publishing his home address.

On Monday night, Carlson said the Times was trying to endanger him and his family by revealing where they live in a yet to be released story.

“They hate my politics. They want this show off the air,” said Carlson. “If one of my children gets hurt because of a story they wrote, they won’t consider it collateral damage. They know it’s the whole point of the exercise: to inflict pain on our family, to terrorize us, to control what we say. That’s the kind of people they are.”

According to Carlson, the Times has “followed” him and his family after they moved from Washington DC after his address was published on Twitter. “Their story about where we live is slated to run in the paper this week,” said Carlson. “Editors there know exactly what will happen to my family when it does run.”

After making this astonishing claim Carlson then went on to name the reporters behind the story, showing viewer photos of Murray Carpenter, photographer Tristan Spinski and the Times’s media editor Jim Windolf.

“How would Murray Carpenter and his photographer, Tristan Spinski, feel if we told you where they live, if we put pictures of their homes on the air?” Carlson asked. “What if we published the home address of every one of the soulless, robot editors at the New York Times, who assigned and managed this incitement of violence against my family?"

“We could do that. We know who they are.”

Carlson’s coded message to his Twitter trolls had an almost immediate effect, leading to the leaking of personal information of the journalist named by the Fox host.

Carlson is lying

It did not take long to discover that Carlson’s claim was an outright lie — not only was the Times not planning on publishing his address, they specifically told him they were not going to do so before he went on air. The Times told The Washington Post that:

“While we do not confirm what may or may not publish in future editions, the Times has not and does not plan to expose any residence of Tucker Carlson’s, which Carlson was aware of before tonight’s broadcast.”

When it comes to credibility, The Times vs Carlson isn’t a close contest, particularly given the Fox News host has a long track record consistently and egregiously lying on his show .

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The Orwellian piece of theater from the somber Carlson was clearly designed to set the conservative Twittersphere ablaze, but more specifically to distract his audience from two very serious scandals he is embroiled in. This obviously fake, extremely malicious act of subterfuge happened just hours after this (via Politico):

Two women accused male Fox News hosts of sexual harassment and, in one woman's case, rape, in a lawsuit filed on Monday in federal court in New York.

Ed Henry, who was fired as a host earlier this month, was accused of sexual harassment and rape in the suit, while hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Howard Kurtz were alleged to have separately behaved in a sexually inappropriate way.

One of the accusers, Cathy Areu, a reporter who appeared on Carlson’s show a number of times claimed that, “Carlson implicitly invited her back to his hotel room for sex in 2018 and refused to have her on his show after she turned down his advances.”

On top of that, Carlson had just come back from an abruptly announced “long planned” trout fishing vacation in the middle of the working week after it transpired that his chief writer was in fact a virulent White Supremacist and misogynist.

Attack and never apologize

It is unclear how serious the sexual harassment claim is, but Carlson clearly sensed a storm brewing and created a fake scandal to draw attention away from his own ones. This is a lesson he has learned well from Donald Trump, and in the current political climate, he knows he can get away with it without any consequence. With stellar ratings and a fellow White Nationalist in the White House, Carlson is accountable only to the audience he has cultivated. And anyone who tunes into Tucker Carlson nightly has been primed to hate responsible media outlets like The New York Times.

Having watched Carlson for many years, this current incarnation of the once semi-serious journalist is extremely frightening. Carlson knows he is lying, and worse, he knows more perceptive observers know he is lying too. He just doesn’t care. In fact, Carlson derives great pleasure in casting liberals as deranged, sociopathic baby killers in a dark, fact free fantasy world that only he (and Trump) can save Americans from. The more liberals despise him for this, the more powerful he becomes. Carlson has learned to feed off of the hatred he inspires in others, and in the current climate, hatred is extremely useful currency.

How Carlson gets away with it

I spent a good amount of time researching reactions to this story on both Twitter and in the media. My findings were depressing to say the least. Conservative outlets did not question Carlson’s assertions at all and simply ran with his version of events. Conservative twitter users are currently trolling the Times and accusing them of trying to get Carlson and his family killed, while mainstream outlets have done their best to “both sides” the story: Tucker says X and the Times says Y — who knows who is telling the truth?

I believe Tucker Carlson is the most dangerous person in American politics right now precisely because he can do this and get away with it. He is virtually untouchable, and he knows it. In Trump’s America, there are few way to attack him effectively. Proving him to be a liar doesn’t work. Outing his staff as closeted White Supremacists doesn’t work, and ad boycotts apparently don’t work either.

The only way to fight Tucker Carlson is to continually expose him for the grifter he is. It isn’t necessarily the lies Carlson tells that pose the real danger, but what motivates them. The multi millionaire son of a frozen food empire isn’t fighting for the average American — he is cynically building a business by exploiting the fears of white people and lying to distract attention from his own repellant behavior. Once you understand this, Carlson’s nightly charades becomes a lot easier to see through.

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