Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear. Night after night, hour by hour, Mr. Carlson warns his viewers that they inhabit a civilization under siege — by violent Black Lives Matter protesters in American cities, by diseased migrants from south of the border, by refugees importing alien cultures, and by tech companies and cultural elites who will silence them, or label them racist, if they complain. When refugees from Africa, numbering in the hundreds, began crossing into Texas from Mexico during the Trump administration, he warned that the continent’s high birthrates meant the new arrivals might soon “overwhelm our country and change it completely and forever.” Amid nationwide outrage over George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Mr. Carlson dismissed those protesting the killing as “criminal mobs.” Companies like Angie’s List and Papa John’s dropped their ads. The following month, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” became the highest-rated cable news show in history.
His encyclopedia of provocations has only expanded. Since the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Carlson has become the most visible and voluble defender of those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to keep Donald J. Trump in office, playing down the presence of white nationalists in the crowd and claiming the attack “barely rates as a footnote.” In February, as Western pundits and politicians lined up to condemn the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, for his impending invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Carlson invited his viewers to shift focus back to the true enemy at home. “Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist?” Mr. Carlson asked. “Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?” He was roundly labeled an apologist and Putin cheerleader, only to press ahead with segments that parroted Russian talking points and promoted Kremlin propaganda about purported Ukrainian bioweapons labs.
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To a degree not broadly appreciated outside Fox, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” is the apex of a programming and editorial strategy that transformed the network during the Trump era, according to interviews with dozens of current and former Fox executives, producers and journalists. Like the Republican Party itself, Fox has sought to wring rising returns out of a slowly declining audience: the older white conservatives who make up Mr. Trump’s base and much of Fox’s core viewership. To minimize content that might tempt them to change the channel, Fox News has sidelined Trump-averse or left-leaning contributors. It has lost some of its most respected news journalists, most recently Chris Wallace, the longtime host of Fox’s flagship Sunday show. During the same period, according to former employees and journalists there, Fox has leaned harder into stories of illegal immigrants or nonwhite Americans caught in acts of crime or violence, often plucked from local news sites and turbocharged by the channel’s vast digital news operation. Network executives ordered up such coverage so relentlessly during the Trump years that some employees referred to it by a grim nickname: “brown menace.”
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On Carlson’s show, he pits the “ruling class” (what he often refers to as “they”) against “you,” his viewers, who are part of a Fox News audience that is 92 percent white and overwhelmingly older, according to Nielsen data. “They” threaten everything “you” believe in.
According to Carlson, “they” include Democratic (and some Republican) officials, members of the media, Big Tech executives, academics, sports and Hollywood stars, and others. “They,” he says, don’t care about “you,” “your children” or “your grandchildren.” nyti.ms/3F2jFZb
Carlson referred to this “ruling class” in more than 800 of his 1,150 episodes from the beginning of his show in November 2016 through 2021, the extent of our analysis. From 2020 on, he pushed this theory in nearly every episode.
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Carlson has promoted the idea of discrimination against white people (in more than 600 episodes) and has warned of shifts in gender norms that will threaten masculinity and lead to falling birthrates (in more than 200 episodes).
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Carlson has used rhetoric related to an unfounded racist conspiracy theory that falling birthrates and immigration are leading to the replacement of white people. Versions of “replacement theory” have been promoted by extremists and have helped inspire mass shootings.
In earlier years, Carlson regularly interviewed guests who debated him on issues, but he has recently devoted far less airtime to opposing views. Of nearly 7,000 guest appearances since 2016, about 1,000 of them contradicted him.
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As the number of opposing guests on Carlson’s show shrank, the length of his monologues has become far longer — typically more than 10 uninterrupted minutes per episode.
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Carlson’s segments often end up in the same place: the destruction of society (600 episodes). He devoted five times as many hours to this narrative of fear in 2021 as he did in 2017, the first full year of the show.
See our full analysis.
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