Tucker Carlson's far-right candidates all went down in flames — with one notable exception
Bob Brigham
November 12, 2022
Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump / Shutterstock
Far-right Fox News personality Tucker Carlson suffered a dramatic rebuke from voters in the 2022 midterms.
Nikki McCann Ramirez described Carlson as having a "type" in a new report for Rolling Stone magazine.
"He likes hardline nationalists who can cosplay anti-elitism while pretending they didn’t go to an Ivy, or have an heiress mother, or have the richest people in the country funding their campaign," Ramirez reported. "He likes the kind of candidate who blends hateful nativism and a fear of the impending collapse of Western Civilization™, with mockery of blue-haired, cat-owning coastal liberals. Turns out Tucker’s type may not be super electable."
With Republicans pointing fingers at each other over disappointing results, Carlson may be second only to Donald Trump in creating the dynamics that resulted in Republicans doing far worse than expected.
"Carlson enjoys a position as a kingmaker and agenda setter for GOP politics," Ramirez wrote. "Look no further than how he almost single-handedly converted the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory from a white nationalist talking point to a major policy concern for conservatives. If there’s a man besides Donald Trump with the power to catapult local political hopefuls into national political figures — and who wielded that power with unbridled enthusiasm in the lead-up to the election — is it not the man with the most-watched cable news show in the country?"
The report noted that J.D. Vance, who successfully held a GOP-controlled Senate seat in Ohio, was on the candidate Carlson pushed hard who won.
"Blake Masters lost to Mark Kelly in Arizona, where gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is already resorting to claims of election rigging to explain her deficit to Democrat Katie Hobbs. In Washington state, the extremist-affiliated House candidate Joe Kent is on the verge of an unexpected defeat at the hands of Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez," Ramirez reported. "Vance, Kent, and Masters, were among Carlson’s most frequent guests on his flagship Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight. According to weekday cable segment data from watchdog group Media Matters, Vance, Kent, and Masters appeared on Carlson’s show 17, 14, and 10 times respectively in the year before the election (11/1/21-11/10/22). Vance and Kent were among the 20 most frequent guests on the show in that time period.
Read the full report.
Bob Brigham
November 12, 2022
Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump / Shutterstock
Far-right Fox News personality Tucker Carlson suffered a dramatic rebuke from voters in the 2022 midterms.
Nikki McCann Ramirez described Carlson as having a "type" in a new report for Rolling Stone magazine.
"He likes hardline nationalists who can cosplay anti-elitism while pretending they didn’t go to an Ivy, or have an heiress mother, or have the richest people in the country funding their campaign," Ramirez reported. "He likes the kind of candidate who blends hateful nativism and a fear of the impending collapse of Western Civilization™, with mockery of blue-haired, cat-owning coastal liberals. Turns out Tucker’s type may not be super electable."
With Republicans pointing fingers at each other over disappointing results, Carlson may be second only to Donald Trump in creating the dynamics that resulted in Republicans doing far worse than expected.
"Carlson enjoys a position as a kingmaker and agenda setter for GOP politics," Ramirez wrote. "Look no further than how he almost single-handedly converted the 'great replacement' conspiracy theory from a white nationalist talking point to a major policy concern for conservatives. If there’s a man besides Donald Trump with the power to catapult local political hopefuls into national political figures — and who wielded that power with unbridled enthusiasm in the lead-up to the election — is it not the man with the most-watched cable news show in the country?"
The report noted that J.D. Vance, who successfully held a GOP-controlled Senate seat in Ohio, was on the candidate Carlson pushed hard who won.
"Blake Masters lost to Mark Kelly in Arizona, where gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is already resorting to claims of election rigging to explain her deficit to Democrat Katie Hobbs. In Washington state, the extremist-affiliated House candidate Joe Kent is on the verge of an unexpected defeat at the hands of Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez," Ramirez reported. "Vance, Kent, and Masters, were among Carlson’s most frequent guests on his flagship Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight. According to weekday cable segment data from watchdog group Media Matters, Vance, Kent, and Masters appeared on Carlson’s show 17, 14, and 10 times respectively in the year before the election (11/1/21-11/10/22). Vance and Kent were among the 20 most frequent guests on the show in that time period.
Read the full report.
Alex Henderson, AlterNet
November 11, 2022
Sean Hannity / Gage Skidmore
The 2022 midterms may be remembered as the worst humiliation that Fox News has suffered since 2012, when pundits at the right-wing cable news channel spent weeks insisting that then-President Barack Obama would be voted out of office — only for Obama to win a decisive reelection victory. GOP strategist Karl Rove, during an Election Night 2012 appearance on Fox News, was described by critics as looking like a deer caught in the headlights when then-Fox host Megyn Kelly informed him that Obama had won Ohio and been reelected — and now, Fox News is being mocked unmercifully for getting the 2022 midterms so wrong.
A video released after the midterms shows one Fox News pundit after another predicting that 2022 would bring a massive “red wave,” but that red wave didn’t materialize. Although control of Congress was still up in the air as of Friday morning, November 11, Democrats performed much better than expected — flipping a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania and winning gubernatorial races not only in Pennsylvania, but also, in Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland and many other states.
The video shows everyone at Fox News from Laura Ingraham to Greg Gutfeld to Maria Bartiromo to Sean Hannity stridently predicting that a major “red wave” would strike on November 8. Especially embarrassing for Fox News is a clip of Marc Thiessen saying, “It is going to be a red wave? Is it going to be red tsunami? I think it’s going to be a red hurricane” — the same Marc Thiessen who, after a lot of election results came in, acknowledged how badly the GOP had underperformed and called for serious “introspection” for his party. Thiessen even called the election results an “absolute disaster” for the GOP.
There was also talk of a “red wave” on MSNBC and CNN before November 8, but they were much more cautious, nuanced and analytical — noting how close many of the polls were and stressing that turnout would be key. MSNBC and CNN offered a lot of detailed analysis; Fox News and Fox Business offered a lot of Republican National Committee (RNC) talking points and cheer-leading for the GOP.
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