I wasn’t aware that the senior executive producer of The Tucker Carlson Tonight show was an openly gay man until I read an excerpt of Michelangelo Signorile’s article for The Blade. His name is Justin Wells, and Wells is not in the closet. Wells is a openly gay man who is married to another man. And Wells doesn’t try to hide that he is the producer of one of most homophobic shows on TV. He’s on Linkedln.
It shouldn’t have surprised or shocked me to read about Wells because he is not the first example of someone willing to do ANYTHING for money and power, including throwing his/her own kind under a tank. But it is sickening to still see this type of behavior from anyone, especially from someone who is a member of a group that is threatened with harassment and violence. But it seems to be the season for this sort of thing (I’m thinking of Herschel Walker as another).
Here is what Signorile’s reports:
By Michelangelo Signorile | NEW YORK – On his first Fox News broadcast following the November 19th mass shooting at Club Q, the LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs in which five people were murdered and at least 17 were injured, Tucker Carlson was undaunted, continuing his relentless smearing of LGBTQ people as “groomers” who are dangerous to children.
After a perfunctory condemnation of the violence, Carlson pivoted back to railing against “drag time story hour for fifth graders” and “genital mutilation of minors” while a graphic image behind him blared, “STOP SEXUALIZING KIDS.”
The following night, Carlson promoted the grotesque view that the staff and patrons of Club Q — where a drag performance was scheduled on that Saturday night of the attack — had it all coming to them. He brought on a guest who said the shooting was “expected and predictable,” and that “it won’t stop until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children.”
Twisted enough. But even more shocking is the little-known fact that a gay man helped craft, mold and disseminate these bloodcurdling distortions and the horrendous demonization against his own community.
And that is an old canard about the LGBTQ community. They are all “predators” after you kids. You don’t hear the same shit being told about straight men wanting to groom girls. A man is attracted to another man, and suddenly he is after boys.
Anyway, we find out more about Mr. Wells who is the pervayor of these lies about the LGBTQ community:
A gay man supercharges Carlson’s promotion of Florida’s odious “don’t say gay” law, which stigmatizes queer kids, teachers and parents — a brutal campaign in which Carlson at one point said teachers who don’t comply “should get beaten up.” And a gay man empowers Carlson’s crusade against trans teens and and their parents, a crusade in which Carlson stated that hospitals should expect violent threats for providing gender-affirming care.
That gay man, Justin Wells, helped promulgate the kind of hate that leads to violence. A mass shooting that happened in the same kind of nightclub at which Wells, in years past, danced the night away in Miami Beach and elsewhere, liberating himself from the world outside and surely never imagining he’d be shot dead.
Now he’s aided the extremists who deny that sense of safety and liberation to every future generation of queer people.
Wells runs the entire Tucker Carlson operation, and is responsible for imprinting the Tucker Carlson brand, which is all about emboldening white heterosexual male grievance, furthering the racist conspiracy of “replacement theory” and pushing an increasingly virulent anti-LGBTQ agenda. Wells is Senior Executive Producer of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and also holds the title of Vice President of Tucker Carlson Digital Products.
“He’s been promoted to a level that no other producer has been since, maybe, David Tabocoff at O’Reilly,” a former Fox employee told me, describing how Tabocoff, who was at Fox with Bill O’Reilly for 16 years, produced O’Reilly’s shows, all of his various specials and interviews, and oversaw his entire brand, including his merchandising.
“I think that Justin has more power than Tabby [Tabacoff] ever had,” another Fox employee, a former producer, countered. “And there’s not another show that out-rates it. Influence-wise, everyone who’s conservative wants to be on Tucker.” Indeed, Wells has his own website, independent of Fox News’s site, JustinWells.com, something that surprised the former Fox News producer.
And you know it’s all about the money and power. How else do you explain it? Wells has his freedom to marry the man he loves, buys a home with him (both names on the property), and goes out clubbing.
As for Wells’s gay friends? If they get hurt by a homophobe pumped up on Tucker Carlson’s lies, what will Wells do? Nothing is my guess.
But Well is noxious just like Herschel Walker. Both give cover to the haters in the GOP. Carlson can say, “I’m not a homophobe. I got Justin Wells working for me!” Walker does the same thing for Trump when Trump is hit with another charge of racism.
Anyone know that homophobe Senator Jesse Helms used a gay man as one of his political strategist and communication gurus? Finkelstein was name, and he had a boyfriend he lived with in CT. I think they even adopted a child. But Finkelstein helped one of the biggest homophobes in the U.S. Senate get reelected.
So I have seen this movie before. It doesn’t make it easy to acknowledge though. It proves that human beings are willing to sellout anyone for money and power though, which is depressing.