When not in the public eye, Tucker Carlson shows a different side. From his one-time
allegiance to the party of Biden, to a "traumatic" post-surgical experience
with opioids, here's what you don't know about the former Fox News host.
In November 1999, Tucker Carlson wrote in Slate that Donald Trump
was "the single most repulsive person on the planet." Carlson went on to add:
"[Donald Trump] is the sort of person I want to keep kicking once he's down."
At the time, Trump was dabbling in presidential politics as a member of the Reform Party.
"I'm a registered Republican. I'm a pretty conservative guy. I'm somewhat
liberal on social issues, especially healthcare, etc."
Years later, Carlson identified a lot of potential in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential
campaign. In an essay for Politico, Carlson wrote that Trump was "the ideal candidate
to fight Washington corruption." He also said that the former real estate developer
was the one Republican candidate who had the greatest chance of defeating Hillary Clinton.
Of course, Carlson was proven right in the face of widespread contrary opinion. However,
despite his broadly sympathetic coverage of Trump, the former Fox News host has
been a critic of the 45th president and even rebuffed his phone calls. According to Yahoo,
Carlson even privately mocked Trump for calling his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight,
in an attempt to prevent negative stories.
In 2017, Tucker Carlson told Business Insider that he was a
registered Democrat in Washington D.C. Carlson told the outlet:
"I'm registered with a party that I sincerely despise because I
think it's really a force for bad in this country, and it's the Democratic party."
Clearly, his "support" for the Democrats was not in the style of Ronald Reagan,
the Republican president who had once been a Hollywood Democrat. Instead,
it was, by his own admission, all about self-interest. Carlson told Business Insider:
"I'm registered because I live in the district [...] and the one election I always vote in is
the mayor's race because it matters. I always vote for the more corrupt candidate over the idealist.
Always. The person who will [...] be happy taking payoffs from developers and leave me alone."
In 2020, the Carlson family sold their Washington D.C. home,
which was located in the affluent Kent suburb.
Tucker Carlson's trade is the written and spoken word, and no matter what one may
think of his politics, he has proven adept at both. Indeed, Tina Brown,
who was Carlson's former editor at Talk magazine, told the Columbia Journalism Review:
"[Tucker Carlson] is a tremendously good writer,
and I always thought it was a real shame that he kind of got sucked into this TV mania thing."
However, like the late provocative writer A.A. Gill,
Carlson has dyslexia. In an interview with Max Raskin, Carlson admitted,
"I'm left-handed and dyslexic, so typing is just a beautiful thing. For me,
it was the key to expressing myself. I keep notes on my phone of ideas that occur."
While dyslexia has not been a great impediment on his self-expression,
Carlson said that it does affect his ability to take physical instruction. He told Max Raskin:
"So, if you said, 'Take three steps to the left,' that would
be hard for me to figure out where the left was."
Those who are less familiar with Tucker Carlson probably remember him as the TV
pundit who liked to wear bow ties. But what many don't realize is that Carlson actually
gave up the bow tie in 2006, back when his image and career were on the rocks.
Carlson first donned a bow tie in 1984 as a 10th-grade student at
St. George, a private boarding school in Rhode Island. The accessory became
his signature garment through his teens, 20s, and early 30s.
It's hard to believe that Carlson ever had a show on MSNBC, but he did,
and the broadcaster even promoted it with the tagline:
"The Man. The Legend. The Bow Tie."
However, behind the scenes, producers mounted a campaign against the bow ties
as they felt they caricatured Carlson. On April 11, 2006, Carlson even told his MSNBC audience:
"I like bow ties, and I certainly spent a lot of time defending them. But,
from now on, I'm going without."
However, Carlson donned the bow tie a few months later, in September 2006,
during a performance on Dancing with the Stars. However, Judge Bruno Tonioli didn't
mince words when judging Carlson's routine with Elena Grinenko, saying,
"I'm sorry, that was dreadful."
In November 2021, Tucker Carlson underwent emergency back surgery, which required
some very strong medication. In a recording obtained by Motherboard, the anchor revealed:
"They gave me fentanyl this morning, that did not cure it — they gave me intravenous
fentanyl ... And they gave me all kinds of other [stuff]. I was like, 'Fine, go for it.'"
In the same recording, Carlson went on to add:
"[It was] one of the most traumatic things that's ever happened to me in my whole life,
ever. [...] I had this spirit of fear within me ... It was super deep. [...] I'm always like,
'Yeah, I'm gonna die, I don't care.' And I mean it. But last night I was like, 'Oh s--t.'"
The television host also said that the experience demonstrated to him the
terrible power of opioids and how they strip people of their "dignity" and "self-respect."
Tucker Carlson supported the Iraq invasion in 2003, announcing on CNN:
"We know today for certain that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction;
they have chemical and biological weapons. And the question remains: What do we do about it?"
Carlson was reacting to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's 2003 address to the
United Nations Security Council. In the speech, Powell tried to convince the council that Iraq
was harboring weapons of mass destruction. Of course, the weapons proved not to exist.
As a result, Carlson's support for the war would ultimately turn to shame and disgust.
He told Observer that he thought Iraq was "a total nightmare and disaster," before adding,
"[I was] ashamed that I went against my own
instincts in supporting it. It's something I'll never do again."
"This mismanagement of that country by our elites is one
of the saddest things America has ever done."
Carlson also told Observer that he was convinced to support the
invasion by "a friend" who he described as "smarter than I am." Additionally,
on a 2020 broadcast of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host referred to Iraq as
a "money pit where Americans go to die." Carlson also severely criticized the "casual
recklessness" and "utter incompetence" of America's involvement in the country.
When Karen McDougal, a Playboy model and alleged former mistress of Donald Trump,
sued Tucker Carlson for defamation, Fox's lawyers argued that Carlson is not, quote,
"stating actual facts" about the topics he discusses. Instead, as NPR notes, Carlson's
lawyers said the host was instead engaging in "exaggeration" and "non-literal commentary."
According to the Associated Press, McDougal sued Carlson of defamation after he accused
the Playboy model of a "classic case of extortion." Carlson was referring to a
$150,000 pay-off McDougal received from American Media, Inc., which he said was "working in
concert" with Trump to quash McDougal's story about her alleged affair with him.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil ruled in Fox's favor. In
response, McDougal wrote in an email to the Associated Press,
"I believe reporting something you know is a lie
as 'news' or 'undisputed facts' is the very definition of malicious."
Radio host Alex Jones had a similar defense in 2017 when his lawyers claimed that the
conspiracy theorist was a "performance artist" who was "playing a character."
Jones' lawyers also claimed that to judge the radio host by this persona
would be like judging Jack Nicholson by his depiction of the Joker in Batman.
"And as you can see, I'm a lot happier."
Tucker Carlson's mother was Lisa McNear Lombardi, a descendant of a wealthy German immigrant named
Henry Miller. Miller made his fortune as a rancher on the west coast. Lisa married
Tucker's father Richard in 1967. However, the couple divorced in the late 1970s. Richard won
custody of Tucker and his brother Buckley, citing Lisa's "repeated difficulties with alcohol,
marijuana, cocaine, and amphetamines," according to the New York Times. Lisa
eventually left the United States for France, never to see her children again.
Tucker's memory of his mother is broadly negative. In 2019,
Carlson told comedian Adam Corolla on his podcast,
"She was like, doing real drugs around us when we were little,
and getting us to do it, and just like being a nut case."
Lisa also didn't show a lot of affection for her boys,
which caused Tucker to feel "all kinds of rage," as he told Carolla. According to
the New York Times, when Carlson's mother died, she left a bizarre note that read,
"I leave my sons Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson and Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson one dollar each."
Suspicious of forgery, the Carlson brothers sued. However, a forensic specialist believed
it to be genuine. In speaking about his mother, Carlson told Carolla:
"She didn't raise us, she was horrible, and then she dies and causes all these problems."
In the fall of 2001, Tucker Carlson and his father
Richard were in a plane crash in the Middle East. Richard wrote in an email,
"They have just reopened the Dubai airport as our plane from Peshawar — Pakistan Air [Flight 231],
an Airbus with 205 people aboard, including crew — crashed on the runway at 2 a.m. this morning."
According to Gulf News, the plane crash-landed after the landing gear collapsed. According
to the The Washington Post, Richard described the crash in detail, writing in his email:
"Tucker and I were in the very front. The wheels seemed to collapse,
and the right wing hit the runway at a couple hundred miles an hour. Flames and huge billows
of smoke shot up along the windows, and an engine on the right wing fell off ..."
Despite the terror of the crash, there were no serious injuries. However, the outcome could have
been very different. Had the plane not settled in sand, a fire probably would have started. In his
email, Richard recalled how once the situation was under control, a firefighter remarked,
"You were lucky you didn't all die."
On April 18, 2023, the voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems settled a $1.6 billion
defamation lawsuit against Fox News. In its lawsuit, the company alleged that it was
detrimental for Fox to perpetuate unproven claims that Dominion helped rig the 2020 election to get
Joe Biden elected president. As a result, the parties agreed to a $787.5 million settlement.
However, as filings associated with the trial revealed, there was a dissonance between the
on-camera behavior of Fox News' personalities and their private thoughts. Tucker Carlson,
for example, claimed to hate Trump with a passion. Carlson
also privately called the Trump presidency a, quote, "disaster."
Two days after the Dominion settlement, Carlson signed off the Friday edition of Tucker Carlson
Tonight, and implored viewers to tune in again the following Monday. In the interim,
Carlson's show was canceled. A statement from Fox News read:
"Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for
his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor."
The decision took effect immediately.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues,
help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).