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Tucker Carlson Gets Real About His Regrets in Media, and You Need to Hear It

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There are a lot of figures populating the news media space in 2023, but Fox News’ Tucker Carlson routinely finds himself above the fray. That’s not just because he has a top-rated show, but because he obviously doesn’t formulate his positions based on how popular they will be.

Carlson has taken a lot of flack over the years for not toeing the line, and that includes a lot of incoming fire from the conservative commentariat. His opinions on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia have earned him scorn from some Republicans, and his views on the COVID-19 vaccine were contentious. Carlson’s more recent exposure of footage from January 6th also resulted in gnashing of teeth among GOP politicians.

But whether you agree with him or not on a given issue, I think you have respect that he’s his own person. He’s not just blindly reading party talking points like some others on his network are so obviously doing (you can guess who I’m talking about).

That’s what made the podcast appearance by Carlson that I’m about to share with you so interesting. In it, he gets honest in a way about his regrets in a way so many others would never dream of doing. In my opinion, it’s a must watch for anyone who follows politics.

CARLSON: I’ve spent my whole life in the media, my dad was in the media. That is a big part of the revelation that’s changed my life is that the media are part of the control appartus.

(crosstalk)

Yeah, I know, cause your younger and smarter, and you’re like “yeah.”

But what if you’re me and you spent your whole life in that world, and to look around and all the sudden you’re like “oh wow,” not only are they part of the problem, but I spent most of my life being part of the problem. Defending the Iraq War, like I actually did that. Can you imagine if you did that?

I was a senior in high school back in 2003 when the invasion of Iraq began. I was too busy doing what seniors in high school do to formulate an opinion on George W. Bush’s ill-fated foreign excursion. But being honest, knowing how the herd mindset is pervasive in politics, I probably would have gone along with it as well. Carlson talking about that openly is something a lot of other conservative commentators refuse to do. You’ll still find some that will defend the war to their death (and they are usually the ones defending Libya and Syria as well).

He continued from there, listing out other regrets. Those include calling people names and dismissing people as conspiracy theorists when he should have given them a chance to explain their position. How often does that come into play in today’s political culture? The answer is every single day. The incessant name-calling and the dismissal of anyone who dares to step outside of the chosen narrative is a cornerstone of the current media environment.

CARLSON: For too long, I participated in the culture where I was like, “anyone who thinks outside these pre-prescribed lanes is crazy, is a conspiracy theorist.” And I just really regret that, I’m ashamed that I did that.

Do you want to know why Carlson is so popular? That line right there explains it all. It’s easy to go with the flow and stick to the script. He has the highest-rated show in cable news because he threw those shackles off. It’s that simple, and it’s why the Joy Reids and Chris Wallaces of the world will never be competition.

Even past just critiquing the media, it’s incredibly refreshing to hear someone in the broader political world say “I’m ashamed I did that.” How much of a game-changer would that be if our politicians had that kind of humility and honesty? Instead, everyone just doubles down on failure in hopes whatever problem they have will be brushed away in the next news cycle. It’s exhausting to chronicle, and Carlson shows that not only is there a better way but that you can be at the top of your game while showcasing it.

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New Poll Shows People Are Losing Trust in Fox News, Yet It’s Still Blowing the Competition Out of the Water

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The Fox News-Dominion lawsuit has been the source of a lot of outrage amid the revelations that Fox News hosts were lending credence to the 2020 stolen election conspiracy theory while simultaneously doubting it behind the scenes.

This lawsuit, which could cost Fox News a lot of money, has exposed one of the worst aspects of life in media: The need to be someone other than yourself in front of a microphone or camera in order to keep hold of your audience. At the corporate level, it seems that Fox News personalities and staffers were worried about losing their audience to Newsmax if they didn’t support – or, at least, appear to consider that the 2020 election was stolen.

The Wall Street Journal has a big piece out today on that subject, and it’s clear that in the heat of the moment, Fox was panicking – though, ultimately, those fears quickly subsided.

Initial ratings data suggested there was some cause for concern. Newsmax typically had tiny ratings, yet during the fourth quarter of 2020—when the election took place—it averaged 242,000 prime-time viewers, a sixfold increase from the previous quarter, according to Nielsen data. Fox News still had much higher ratings, with around 3.5 million prime-time viewers, but took Newsmax’s encroachment on its turf seriously, the court documents show.

Newsmax even topped one million viewers during the 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. hour on Nov. 12, 2020. A smaller right-wing channel, Herring Networks Inc.’s One America News Network, also experienced ratings gains at the time.

Newsmax wasn’t able to sustain the gains, as Fox News made programming changes to win back viewers and the election-fraud story line faded. In January, DirecTV dropped Newsmax, denting its reach. Several Republican senators wrote to the satellite-television company, criticizing its move. DirecTV has said Newsmax is seeking an unreasonable increase in distribution fees.

The upshot: This year, Newsmax’s viewership has declined markedly, and it is averaging 111,000 viewers in prime time and 93,000 for the total day, according to Nielsen. A spokesman for Newsmax declined to comment.

Fox’s worries were ultimately unfounded, a corporate decision made that cost the network credibility amid its panic that the competition – other networks in the right-wing space, not other major networks – was growing and becoming a threat.

Tucker Carlson, Fox News
AP Photo/Richard Drew

However, neither Newsmax nor One America News have the corporate backing or the momentum that Fox has been building over the last few decades. Established in 1996, Fox offered something no other network did at the time – a different perspective. Realizing that people were looking for a news organization that didn’t offer the same “conventional wisdom” and center-left perspective, the network gave voters an alternative.

The business strategy was successful, but it took a very long time to get there. Fox News had been around for nearly 20 years when Newsmax was established in 2014, and One America News started only a year earlier.

But, because Fox has been caught up in this lawsuit and exposed as either hypocrites or heretics (depending on your perspective), they have lost some support among viewers. This bit comes from Variety and a poll they shared the results of.

More than a fifth of Fox News Channel viewers are less trusting of the cable network in the wake of publicly disclosed text messages and emails from Fox executives and on-air personalities, according to a new survey.

But only 9% of Fox News viewers say they aren’t watching the network as much as they used to, per research provided exclusively to Variety Intelligence Platform by consumer insights specialists Maru Group.

A representative for Fox News told VIP+, “There has been no impact to advertising, with no advertisers dropping or pausing.”

But there’s more, with Variety also noting that “more than half of Fox News viewers who said they were aware of the deposition and texts said they continue to trust Fox News — nearly double the percentage of the group that said they trust the network less.”

When you look at the ratings for Fox, it’s clear they aren’t suffering. They are still dominating in almost all hours of the day, even in the 25-64 demographic.

Despite discovery in the Dominion lawsuit, Fox News hasn’t really lost any of its audience, but a chunk of the audience has moved on from the stolen election claims, Variety noted.

In addition, 13% of Fox News viewers no longer believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen after reading communications in which the network’s stars, including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, were making allegations on TV regarding voter fraud that was inconsistent with what they were saying privately.

That is a fairly big shift for that audience, but also shows something that the other major networks still don’t seem to get: People like the product that Fox is putting out there. Fox was worried they’d lose their audience, and they chased what they thought the audience wanted. But in the long run, Fox has survived and even thrived because of its original mission.

You may not like that Fox is surviving so well, but they are. What’s more, this exposure from the Dominion lawsuit really doesn’t give them any incentive to do anything other than what they have been doing and people will still watch. Meanwhile, people continue to flee CNN and MSNBC can’t seem to grow all that much. And as much as they want to whine and moan about “misinformation” and the like, those networks have consistently chosen a side and always come out looking worse for it.

The bottom line here is that these networks shouldn’t be chasing audiences. CNN chased the anti-Trump sentiment for six years and their ratings have collapsed. MSNBC has chased academic progressivism and they have hit their ceiling. Fox chased conservatism, but they had broad appeal and got a bigger audience share.

It wasn’t until Fox News chased a very specific target audience that they lost their way. But their audience is also very forgiving, and they have stuck with them. That’s why Fox will continue to be a top-performing brand. Much to the chagrin of the others.

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Donald Trump vs. Rupert Murdoch Feud Heats up, and It’s Getting Nasty

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(The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.)

The bad blood between News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and former President Donald Trump has been simmering for months, but in the past week, it’s finally boiled over, with Trump blasting out sizzling Truth Social posts criticizing the man in charge of Fox News, the NY Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Fox News is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems in a $1.6B defamation suit that claims the channel knowingly slandered the company by promoting stories questioning the accuracy of their voting machines.

Last week, Murdoch testified that he had serious questions about the story, and that he “would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight.” This apparently infuriated Trump, who hit back with two posts, the first blasting former Speaker of the House and Fox Board Member Paul Ryan:

He then went on to personally challenge Murdoch:

On Monday, Trump was at it again, arguing that the “2000 Mules”  movie by Dinesh D’Souza and the Twitter Files showing big-tech censorship was proof of a rigged election:

Trump’s animosity probably had been building for some months. Last November, I reported that Murdoch had turned the page on The Donald and was throwing the considerable weight of his news empire behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, even sending his son and Fox News co-chairman Lachlan to inform DeSantis of the decision.

After the midterm elections, meanwhile, both the Wall Street Journal and the NY Post published mocking pieces against Trump, with the former calling him “the Republican Party’s biggest loser” and the Post going with the headline, “Trumpty Dumpty.”

Now there are reports that the network has gone so far as to impose a soft ban on Trump:

The news startup Semafor reports that the cooling of relations between the former president and his once-beloved cable news channel has gone so far that a “soft ban” or “silent ban” is now holding Trump at arm’s length. The former US president has not made a weekday showing on Fox News since he chatted with his closest friend among the network’s star hosts, Sean Hannity, in September. [It should be noted, however, that Trump phoned into Hannity’s show Monday night.]

Meanwhile, potential presidential contenders DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy have been seen regularly on the outlet in recent weeks.

The problem for Murdoch is he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. Clearly, both he and Lachlan are big fans of DeSantis, but his top anchors and many of his viewers aren’t ready to give up on Trump just yet. Murdoch may be able to keep talk of Trump quiet during the day, but if he tries to tell his primetime moneymakers like Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham to pipe down, he’ll start an internecine war.

Many viewers, meanwhile, have still not forgiven Fox for calling Arizona for Biden before polls closed in the 2020 election, and could potentially drift off to outlets like Newsmax, OAN and Right Side Broadcasting Network

Trump’s visibility is seriously lessened by not having the network cover him, and since the ex-prez has thus far refused to return to Twitter after his ban was revoked, his news presence simply isn’t as strong as it once was.

It will be interesting to see if the two sides can find a peaceful resolution because this feud does not appear to be in either of their best interests. Many people may prefer DeSantis as the eventual Republican nominee, but few argue that he is as charismatic as Trump and will draw as many viewers.

Conservatives routinely complain about the open bias we see at so many of our mainstream media outlets like the New York Times and the network news. Fox makes no secret of its conservative bent, but I’m not a fan of them openly backing one GOP candidate over another—and placing a soft ban on Trump. That doesn’t seem “fair and balanced” to me.

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Mitch, Please: McConnell Goes Full RINO in Condemning Tucker Carlson and New J6 Video

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The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

While sober observers of news and politics take time to contemplate the new J6 video released by Tucker Carlson and what it means to the media-constructed narrative of that day’s events, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell instead chose, yet again, to side with Democrats and condemned the release of the new footage:

“With regard to the presentation on Fox News last night, I want to associate myself entirely with the opinion of the chief of the Capitol police about what happened on January 6.”

McConnell offered his hot take at his regular Tuesday afternoon media scrum in the halls of the Capitol. The opinion McConnell is “associating” himself with is that of U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger, who wrote a scathing letter to his officers decrying what he deemed “offensive and misleading conclusions” made by Carlson. Manger continued, “The program conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video. The commentary fails to provide context about the chaos and violence that happened before or during these less tense moments.”

The same argument, of course, could be made about the scant and selectively-edited video that had thus far been made available to the public. Manger is a willing participant in the narrative built these last two years by Democrats, Trump-hating RINOs (paging Liz Cheney!), and their dupes in the mainstream media; it’s quid pro quo at its finest. Those serious about uncovering what really happened that day would welcome the additional context provided by the new video and ask questions about possible erroneous conclusions that have been drawn about January 6.

By associating himself with Manger, McConnell paints himself as being supremely uninterested in the truth. He rather gallingly concluded, “It was a mistake in my view for Fox News to depict this in a way that is completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at Capitol thinks.”

Mitch, please. What if the truth is hiding somewhere in that “variance?” McConnell’s lack of curiosity about the truth could be the sign of an old man who’s spent far too much time in DC; Nikki Haley’s proposal of a competency test for our aged, out-of-touch career politicians sounds better by the day. But, McConnell rarely makes moves like this without his own political expediency being top of mind. Perhaps he’s afraid his own (possible) role in failing to secure the Capitol that day will come to light if additional details emerge? Deflection and projection are tools of the left that McConnell seems to have co-opted with aplomb.

There’s also some not-so-subtle, intra-party political subtext here: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided Tucker Carlson with the new footage. Fault lines began showing after the GOP’s lackluster showing in the midterm elections last year. McCarthy, in order to secure the votes necessary to become speaker of the House, had to make serious concessions to the right flank of his party; McConnell fell short of becoming majority leader in the Senate, so he had the freedom to continue to be the same old Mitch McConnell we’ve seen for years. The new J6 footage, to a certain extent, pits McCarthy against McConnell in a battle royale for Republican supremacy, with McCarthy, improbably, representing the side of truth and justice. Sadly, McConnell doesn’t seem to know that he forfeited that fight years ago.

Mitch McConnell is up for reelection in 2026.

You can read the full text of Manger’s letter here:

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Chuck Schumer Is a Bit Mad at Tucker Carlson Over the J6 Video Release Last Night

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The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

You know, there are few things that make me happy err…more upset, than when a camera-chasing politician goes to the floor of the Senate or House floor and bares their cold rotten soul for all to see. Most of these folks are just wanna-be actors and you can just hear in their voices and facial reactions how many times they have practiced the lines they deliver and they still do it badly.

Let’s take Sen. Chuck Schumer from the rapidly declining State of New York, for example. He watched in HORROR as Tucker Carlson went on his show last night and released some of the Jan. 6th videos that the American public has not yet seen.

My colleague, Nick Arama, covered this last night right here: Tucker Releases Clips That Blow up the Jan. 6 Narrative…

Tucker also dealt with the continuing media lie that police officers were killed that day by rioters. Joe Biden himself has repeated this lie. Many Democrats and media continue to tell this lie to this day, generally including Officer Brian Sicknick.

Media told the lie for months before the NY Times and some of the others pulled back the lie that Sicknick had been killed that day. I reported on Jan. 10, 2021, that the cause of Sicknick’s death might not be what the media was reporting, that it may have been a result of a medical condition. Indeed there was nothing to support that he had been beaten with a fire extinguisher, as they claimed. As we reported back on Feb. 5, while liberal media was still spreading a false story, family reports indicated that he suffered from a stroke and died the following day, not during the riot.

Carlson showed a video of Sicknick inside the building and he said they had evidence that the Jan. 6 Committee had seen it so they knew he appeared in good condition after the rioting outside the building. Yet they did not release this video that would have shown that because it would have put a crimp in their “deadly” narrative.

Well, Chuck was not having any of the public making up their own mind after more video was released. Here are just a couple of minutes of his pristine thoughts on the matter.

With contempt for the facts disregard of the risks and knowing full well he was lying, lying to his audience Fox News host Tucker Carlson ran a lengthy segment last night arguing the January 6th Capitol was NOT a violent insurrection.

One of the things that I’m sure got Chuck upset was the video of the QAnon Shaman (otherwise known as Village People Guy) being led to the Senate floor by what looked to be Capitol Hill Police in a very nonchalant, friendly manner. The police checked to see if doors were open for the bloke to access the room and, at one point, it looked like the guy wearing horns walked through seven or eight police with no one bothering to at least ask him how he did his makeup, let alone what he was doing in the building.

Chuck must have fainted at the mere thought of one of these heathens looking to see what he was keeping on or in his desk.

Really, what Schumer is upset about is that the vast majority of the people that were in the Capitol that day were peacefully wandering around taking pictures and we’re not committing any acts of violence. I’m sure the founders of the country, when they used the word “insurrection,” never envisioned wandering around the nation’s Capitol taking selfies and walking peacefully through it.

The British of 1812 are laughing at that description.

The narrative and the notion that every person that was at the Capitol that day was there to burn things down and overthrow Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer while accessing the nuke codes is a bit busted today. I’m going to lay my money down on that being why Chuck had the sads on the floor today.

Should the @$$hats that stormed the doors and broke windows be left off the hook?

Absolutely not.

However, the vast majority of those people in that building on that day did nothing but walk in the door, sometimes waved in by people who sure looked like cops.

All the Democrats, including honorary stooge Dems like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, feel a bit red-faced today after the video hit the airwaves last night — and they should.

Always sucks to get caught in a lie.

HEY, if you have thoughts on any of this, you can always let me know by checking out my bio RIGHT HERE and let me know via email to social media platforms. If you get really creative, I may mention you on my radio show or Facebook live events that I do LIVE three times a week.

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