Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Come on, man.

This really is a full service blog.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Late Night ‘Useful Idiot, or Willing Dupe?’ Open Thread: Tucker Carlson Edition

Late Night ‘Useful Idiot, or Willing Dupe?’ Open Thread: Tucker Carlson Edition

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Well, yeah, Carlson (almost certainly) knows what he’s doing. (Here’s a comprehensive Carlson bio from the Columbia Journalism Review; the man’s not actually ignorant, although he may, in the predictable privileged-white-male arc from Roguish Bad Boy to Angry Old Crank, have willed himself into stupidity.) But this whole sweaty ‘The NSA spied on my privates privacy!!!1!’ routine seems… too sincere. The character Tucker Carlson plays on Fox News is angry about the same tired, tawdry handful of predictable OUTRAGES — immigrants, liberals, women, Democrats, people who might be having sex in ways not approved by Tucker Carlson, kids these days — just the usual bile buffet for bitter old Fox News viewers. When the segment ends, Carlson pivots to the next OUTRAGE, and from all reports he doesn’t much care whether the pivot makes any sense. But this NSA thing? This, he seems to take seriously.

(A note about the top tweet: Nicole Perlroth is a cybersecurity reporter for the NYTimes. It’s not just snarky no-name liberals who find Carlson’s behavior out of character!)

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  3. 3.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jerzy Russian: I was going to ask about Fucker Carlson being a Willing Idiot.

    Because you know damn well that everyone at Faux is vaccinated, from the Murdochs down to every unpaid intern.

  4. 4.

    Jerzy Russian

    I assume “getting caught with his dick in the mousetrap” is a metaphor or something.  If it were true I would have to feel sorry for him and I don’t want to do that.

  5. 5.

    Wapiti

    So why doesn’t the guy who runs Fox fire his ass? That would be my #1 question. Did he clear it upstairs? Or is Murdoch Jr. happy to work for Putin?

  6. 6.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jerzy Russian:

    I assume “getting caught with his dick in the mousetrap” is a metaphor or something.  If it were true I would have to feel sorry for him

    You generous soul.

    I would wonder “Why did he have his dick near a set mousetrap – or an unset one for that matter?”

  7. 7.

    John Revolta

    While I would love to think that this is his way of getting out in front of some sort of charges, Old Man Occam tells me that this is just some shit he’s doing to get attention. I guess we”l find out.

  10. 10.

    Adam L Silverman

    Just a quick comment on this, I can’t hang out and discuss the topic. What I think happened here is that either Carlson was approached by the appropriate* counterintelligence officers regarding a defensive briefing over the people he’s been in contact with to negotiate an “interview with Putin” or his producer was. And that’s how they knew that their communications had been picked up as incidental collection of the actual targets. Carlson, who has a good sense for what will fuel the grievance political movement he’s building each night at 9 on Fox News on cable and during the day during his Fox streaming show, recognized he could use this to turn himself into a political martyr and make himself the ultimate victim of Republicans and conservatives favorite fictional boogeymen: the socialist, communist, fascist, and totalitarian Biden administration, his Democratic Party, and the Deep State they’ve been conspiring with for years.

    It is important to remember what Carlson is really doing. He’s not doing right of center or even hard right political commentary. Rather, he’s building a revanchist white Christian herrenvolk movement around himself. Creating his own cult of personality. It is still unclear what he’s going to do with it. Whether he’s building it for his own run for president in 2024 or to make himself a kingmaker by leveraging it on behalf of a specific candidate not yet named. Regardless, while everyone frets about Trump doing a rally or two a month that draws thousands, in addition to an appearance by video or in person at a conference, such as this weekend’s CPAC-Dallas, to hear Trump do his now old and tired schtick, which is essentially reruns, Carlson is doing a rally every night of the week. Five nights a week Carlson is doing a televised hour long rally to 3 or 4 million people. Five days a week he’s doing a second one during the day for several thousand to tens of thousands more.

    * By appropriate, I’m referring to either the NSA or the FBI. If the target of the collection was both a foreign national and outside the US, then the NSA would have done the collection. If the target of the national was a foreign national inside the US, then the FBI would have done the collection. Though the approach for a defensive briefing would, most likely, have come from special agents with the FBI’s National Security division, which handles, among other things, counterintelligence.

  11. 11.

    Mary G

    I’d like to get all “Tick Tock Motherfuckers,” but after 4++ years of that we never seem to get the big boom. I’ll wait and see.

  12. 12.

    smike

    @mrmoshpotato: 

    I would wonder “Why did he have his dick near a set mousetrap – or an unset one for that matter?”

    To own the libs is the only correct answer.

  13. 13.

    Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Interesting. So there may be no “there” there, other than Fucker Failson reaching out to the “wrong” Russian Nazi’s and Gangsters to try to “arrange” a Putinview,

    and was warned about the “nature” of the people he was talking to, and advised to be careful about what he says or responds to, as “both sides” are monitoring the convo.

    Instead of reading the memo, he decided to climb up on the cross, which sucks, as other people could use the wood for better projects.

  14. 14.

    West of the Rockies

    @mrmoshpotato:  This one time,  I was working in the basement, and it was really hot, so I was naked, and…

    Wait a minute… this is sounding like a Cole story!

  17. 17.

    Mai Naem mobile

    My initial thought was that Tucks was trying to get ahead of a scandal. I read somewhere that Fox’s ratings are down. Everybody’s ratings are down but apparently Fox’s were sliding before the current slide. Anyhow, that makes me think that he is doing it for attention. Also, the RW has been looking for a replacement for Rush – maybe Tucks is trying to grab that spot as well.

  22. 22.

    sab

    OT Why is my family in Ohio being awakened by Amber Alert in NJ? All it does is make me turn off my notification alarm so I will miss any alert in Ohio. Not useful. Not helpful.

  23. 23.

    sab

    Governor DeWine, who apparently hates freedom (to annoy and possibly burn up your neighborhood), has vetoed the legislation authorizing sale of residential use fireworks. I disagree with him on almost everything, but he is still trying to keep us alive. Even my Trumpian Evangelical neighbors are upset about the just passed 4th. Seriously traumatic for our pets. My non-Evangelical neighbors will be disappointed. Oh well.

  25. 25.

    James E Powell

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Whether he’s building it for his own run for president in 2024 or to make himself a kingmaker by leveraging it on behalf of a specific candidate not yet named.

    There is a huge hole in the right-wing propaganda universe, a hole the size of Rush Limbaugh. Perhaps he aims to fill it.

    Surprised we haven’t heard about a successor to that a hole.

  26. 26.

    sab

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Are yours just firecrackers and bottle rockets (and gunshots) or actual fireworks? Idiots in state legislature were trying to allow things bigger than bottle rockets. Like we all live on ten acres plots.

  27. 27.

    sab

    @James E Powell: Carlson is so extremely preppy. His appeal to Fox audience never ceases to amaze me. He would be offended if he had to come in close contact with any of them.

  29. 29.

    sab

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I hate M80s. At least our resident young banker (Monday holidays, drunken yard parties ’til dawn) will be gone from any influence in the neighborhood when her pending house sale settles. I hope she hasn’t sold to Trumpsters.

  30. 30.

    Mary G

    ??

    UPDATE: After being found wandering around the rubble and taken to an animal shelter, Binx the cat that lived in apt #904 of Champlain Towers in Surfside has been reunited with her owners. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/Xb0RPMHEfr— Lorenzo The Cat (@LorenzoTheCat) July 9, 2021

  31. 31.

    WereBear

    @sab: He tells them what they want to hear. Essence of right wing success.

    Joy Reid’s epic takedown of #Tuckems revealed he’s always been the metaphorical “red-headed stepchild.” Literally: his father married an heiress. I’m sure, knowing his charms, no one in the circles he wants to belong to ever lets him forget his blood is less than blue…

  33. 33.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @sab: ​
      My cats dug a trench and wore doughboy helmets to weather the incoming. The neighborhood looked like Gallipoli on the 4th.

  34. 34.

    sab

    @WereBear: Also too his mom bailed on the family project. I could be sympathetic if he hadn’t been so toxic in his life afterwards.

  35. 35.

    James E Powell

    @sab:

    I’m with you. Carlson is the archetype for a guy who no one can stand, but will pretend to like to his face if their job requires it.

  37. 37.

    WereBear

    @sab: Likewise. But so many have dealt with family upheaval, and they don’t turn Nazi.

    Tucker reminds me of the infamous Leopold and Loeb. Fantasies of unchecked power, stinging from anti-Semitism, and yet the world was as open to them as it could possibly be.

    So many gifts, so much privilege, squandered.

  38. 38.

    WereBear

    @sab: Mine seemed to handle it with not much agitation, and I wandered around (hands off) with reassurances.

    It was the next day that they had to be worn down for hours, their nervous agitation lingered so much.

  39. 39.

    sab

    @WereBear: Dobby the demon cat has turned into a pleasant little guy. Even my husband admits he seems quite normal.

    He was sprawled on my lap the other day getting scritches, when Meg jumped up, also expecting scritches. She did not know he was there, and hissed at him. He took off in a panic, leaving claw marks on my face. I hissed at her. We have since made up.

    Pitbull is very protective of her little embattled brother. Stepdaughter said they didn’t get along. I beg to diiffer.

  40. 40.

    WereBear

    @sab: Cats have higher sensory perception and a hair-trigger nervous system. Add in the stress of survival and they are different after rescue.

    And after they decompress :)

  41. 41.

    bbleh

    @Mai Naem mobile: @Adam L Silverman: @sab:  I’m gonna go with the entertainment angle, plus an eye on being the next Rush, rather than any larger politico-historical ambitions.  He’s another lucky-born, well-married opportunist who has stumbled into something he can exploit and is intelligent (and amoral) enough to realize it, but I don’t credit him with the drive or the vision for anything larger.

    Now that’s not saying it won’t snowball on its own — look at what happened with Trump — but that’s due far more to larger historical circumstances than to his own efforts or plan. Trump is lazy, and I don’t credit Carlson with being much better.

  42. 42.

    Chris Johnson

    Neither useful idiot NOR willing dupe.

    Remember, Trump never missed his sessions watching Tucker Carlson. Our boy Tucker played a very, very interesting role. Note how he tries to manage the behavior of a guy he thinks is more powerful than him: https://www.salon.com/2020/10/30/someones-reading-our-texts-tucker-carlson-ups-and-the-non-stolen-biden-documents/

    He thought that guy was Roger Stone, and tactfully kept ‘Roger Stone”s tradecraft from lapsing, knowing Stone was more arrogant and could screw up his treason in ways that would hurt the project. He had a pretty good idea of what he was up against, in stark contrast to nutballs like Stone, Trump, Giuliani… Tucker is very interesting, very very interesting.

    I’ve said more than once that Russia’s efforts to attack our country are largely decentralized, distributed, run through things like QAnon where they don’t have direct control and are just dumping manipulation out there with no real ability to control it.

    Tucker Carlson is the exception. He flipped, don’t know when or why (though he does paint the perfect picture of the ambitious, insecure potential traitor who wants ALL the things he can’t have, and will do anything to have them). He’s a smart guy, smarter than he looks and with far better discipline than the assholes we had running around the Oval Office for four years. They were the wrecking balls, but Tucker is more old school: Tucker is the guy the wrecking balls were told to listen to. He’s the numbers station, the one whose communications are MOSTLY entirely public and beyond reproach, but look into him and you will find he is the one who is coordinating very directly with the Kremlin in full cooperation with all they are attempting. He’s a key guy.

    BECAUSE he is seemingly beyond reproach and obviously doing/saying all of it entirely in public, with no obvious connection… except for that bit where he thinks he’s talking to Roger Stone and reacts like he’s cautioning Stone for the Nth time not to be a fool, realizes he’s fucked up and instantly goes silent revealing no further attack surface.

    Tucker Carlson is good at this like no other Russian asset, but during the Trump years he took a more active role, somehow, and it’s that which he fears: he didn’t stick to directing Trump and co. only through his public broadcasts. He’s in contact with more people than he would like to admit, and he’s no stranger to Putin: interview, hell. He’s Putin’s best guy on the inside, the one they rightly trust because he’s truly their guy and can handle himself. This is him handling himself and trying to immunize himself against what will come out, without knowing exactly what they have on him.

    If he wasn’t knowingly coordinating with the cowboys like Roger Stone he wouldn’t be having a problem here…

  43. 43.

    Geminid

    @WereBear: When I was thinking about the Charlottesville Jackson and Lee statues that are coming down today, I was reminded that both Thomas Jackson and William T. Sherman both were actual red headed stepchilds. Sherman’s well-to-do stepfather did not like the middle name “Tecumseh,” and tried to erase it. And the stepfather really did not like it when Sherman courted the man’s natural daughter. Despite the father’s disapproval, Sherman married his stepsister Ellen and they had a happy life together.

    Jackson’s stepfather put him to work in the family mill. When Jackson turned 18, he was made county Constable. My theory is that his stepfather got him the job just to get rid of him. Jackson was a hard man to get along with.

    Jackson’s sister, a Unionist, claimed that he had cheated to pass his admission exam for West Point. This sounds true; Jackson had very little schooling, and only survived his first years at the Academy through constant study.

    Jackson’s sister nursed wounded Union soldiers. She claimed that she patched them up as fast as her brother got them hurt.

  44. 44.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I sometimes wonder how it would have gone is Jackson had been born 100 miles west, in Ohio, and Sherman had been born 100 miled east, in Virginia. I think Jackson would have been a Union officer, and probably would have been killed, maybe at Shiloh.

    Sherman was a realist, not a romantic. I think he would have gone with the Union also. When Louisiana seceded, Sherman was living there, teaching  at a military academy. Some local leaders encouraged him to stay, saying that if he continued teaching he might stay out of the upcoming war (like many at the time, they thought the war would be over in a year). Sherman told them that the Confederacy had no chance, explained why, and caught a riverboat going North.

  45. 45.

    evodevo

    @sab: ​
      Yeah…we get Amber alerts for…Ohio. I guess it sorta makes sense because we live in KY along I-75, a major north-south route out of OH…
    But…Jersey??

  47. 47.

    TheQuietOne

    I’m placing my bet about dirty little Carlson. He’s tipping off the people he was working with in whatever conversation he got caught having by telling them on his show they’ve been caught by the good guys.

  48. 48.

    Central Planning

    @WereBear: When my two cats spot another cat outside, they start hissing at each other, like a “no, you go take care of them” conversation. They never hiss at the interloper.

  49. 49.

    marklar

    @John Revolta: My Occam take is even simpler.

    Tucker probably mentioned his reaching out to Putin’s camp to an acquaintance who has done some contract work for the NSA, and was told “You do realize that correspondences with those folks is likely being monitored.”

    That, in turn, spooked him.  You can tell from his show just how easily he is frightened!

  51. 51.

    TheQuietOne

    It would be refreshing to just once learn that a prominent right winger was helping US intelligence against foreign actors. Guess that’s not going to happen.

  54. 54.

    J R in WV

    @Wapiti:

    is Murdoch Jr. happy to work for Putin?

    All the Murdochen  are working for Putin. I expect they believe they have no choice after seeing people executed right on the streets of Jolly old England.

    If they didn’t really want to, I mean, which I expect they really do.

  55. 55.

    Sloegin

    Idiot or Dupe?  Neither.  Tucker is a stone cold killer.  With his downplaying covid, railing against public safety measures, and his anti-vax routine, he has killed people.  He is currently killing people.  He will continue to kill people until he’s off the airwaves.

    He’s not a clown.  He’s a public menace.

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