On the menu today: We’re almost to Christmas break, but the world keeps throwing curveballs. This morning, we catch up with Tucker Carlson, who declares that the people who represent Ron DeSantis “online are the nastiest, the stupidest, and the most zero-sum people I’ve ever seen in my life,” that he believes that the United States is under attack by some sort of malevolent “spiritual” beings and that there is good reason to believe the U.S. government has reached an agreement with this demonic, supernatural force.
Tucker Down the Rabbit Hole
I don’t pay a lot of attention to what Tucker Carlson says, but two recent quotes of his percolated their way through social media to grab my eye — and I think they ought to shape our perceptions of the man who is starting his own streaming service and who is indisputably one of the top five most influential figures in right-of-center media, even without a show on Fox News.
First, during a live discussion hosted by Tim Pool at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, Carlson spoke bluntly about how he felt about Ron DeSantis’s supporters:
“You really get the sense that Ron DeSantis — who I liked as governor — the people who represent him online are the nastiest, the stupidest, and the most zero-sum people I’ve ever seen in my life, and I don’t think that reflects him, but it’s like, this is kind of small ball.”
When Carlson says “the people who represent him online,” Carlson might mean DeSantis’s official spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw. I presume Carlson also means the social-media influencers who have signed on, professionally, for the DeSantis campaign. He may well mean the people who have no formal affiliation with the campaign but who root for, defend, and tout DeSantis on Twitter and other social-media platforms. Note that Carlson went out of his way to emphasize that he liked DeSantis as governor, but he made no such caveat or exception for those currently supporting DeSantis in the primary.
The people who support DeSantis come in all shapes and sizes and personalities and mindsets. So perhaps there are nastier, stupider, more zero-sum DeSantis supporters out there, and I just haven’t run into them. Or perhaps my status as a columnist who’s been pretty pro-DeSantis has shielded me from the worst traits of this online crowd.
But with that said, the implication of this is that the online crowd of Trump supporters are not particularly nasty, stupid, or zero-sum in their thinking. (Or, for that matter, the online crowd of Nikki Haley supporters, Chris Christie supporters, and those teeming throngs of online Asa Hutchinson supporters who always barge in and dominate every conversation.)
Carlson is a Trump guy — he endorsed Trump at the beginning of the month. In fact, Trump has more than once mentioned Carlson as a potential running-mate option, and reportedly, Melania Trump wants her husband to pick Carlson as his vice-presidential nominee. Carlson himself says he has no interest in running for office. (Yes, I recall that back in early January 2021, Carlson once texted an unidentified person, “I hate him passionately,” referring to Trump. That apparently is water under the bridge.)
Now, maybe I carry a grudge from those “Trump’s gonna put you in the ovens” meme replies from the neo-Nazis back in 2016. I know that’s only a small minority of the 74.2 million people who voted for Trump in 2020. But I marvel how anyone can look at DeSantis supporters and publicly lament that that particular group is so nasty and stupid, and not have any comparable reaction to Trump supporters on social media.
Your mileage may vary, but my sense is that the typical online supporter of a presidential candidate often echoes the style and persona of the candidate. Ask an online supporter of DeSantis why the governor should be president, and they’re likely to rattle off a long list of statistics and figures showcasing how happy Florida residents are with the governance of their state. Ask an online supporter of Trump why he should be president, and you’ll get told that DeSantis wears lifts in his shoes.
The second comment from Carlson that caught my eye came in the same interview, when he declared that he believes that what people believe are UFO and alien sightings are actually signs we are being invaded by a malevolent spiritual force, and that there is good reason to believe that the U.S. government is actually working in partnership with that malevolent spiritual force:
It’s my personal belief, based upon a fair amount of evidence, they’re not aliens, they’ve always been here. And I do think it’s spiritual. That’s my view. And again it’s not provable, but based on the evidence
[crosstalk]
If the US government has, in fact, had contact, direct contact, with these beings, whatever they are, I’ve already told you what I think they are — and has entered into some sort of agreement with them, which is the claim of informed people, it’s a very, very, very heavy thing.
I’m not going to tell you what to believe spiritually. A bit later in the interview, Carlson declares that evil exists, and I doubt anyone would dispute that. It manifests in human actions in many ways. After the year we’ve had, watching footage of the Hamas massacres, the landlord who murdered that six-year-old child, the sudden brutality that killed a man just for attending a demonstration, the sadism that drove the widespread execution of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs . . . evil had a great year in 2023.
(Honestly, I would not object to comparing Hamas to demons or devils.)
BUT . . . I think if you’re going to publicly make the argument that the United States government has entered into an agreement with evil demons, you really ought to bring some serious evidence to the table. Is that too much to ask? The bigger and more consequential the accusation, the more important it is to have proof and verification.
(I can hear it now: “But Jim, look at the evidence!” In fact, I’m sure there’s someone out there right now who’s insisting that the fact that I’m skeptical that the U.S. government is secretly in an alliance with dark spiritual forces is a sign that I, too, am in an alliance with dark spiritual forces. That’s a really harsh way of characterizing my loyalty to an institution that generates nothing but despair and misery, known as the New York Jets. If you’re looking for a silver lining in Carlson’s assertion, it’s that based on our track record with the South Vietnamese, the Kurds, and our Afghan allies, at some point, the U.S. government will turn its back on the forces of Hell and abandon them when Hell needs us most.)
We live in a world where a guy went into a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant with a gun, believing that Hillary Clinton was running a child-trafficking operation out of the basement. Another guy blew up downtown Nashville on Christmas Day 2020 because he believed in lizard people. The man who killed worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh believed that Jews and George Soros were helping migrant caravans in Mexico.
If you run around, speaking on podcasts and at conferences, contending that the problems in our country and our society are the result of government officials conspiring with dark, sinister, nonhuman forces . . . isn’t it at least possible, if not likely, that it will convince people that they ought to do something about that terrible conspiracy? This is X-Files stuff, contending that the fate of the planet and humanity are at stake. When you say that everything we hold dear hangs in the balance, it does a lot to convince people that extraordinary measures are justified.
You don’t see people stockpiling weapons and taking hostages because they want the capital-gains tax reduced.
I’m not saying Tucker Carlson wants Americans to run around and start attacking the U.S. government because it signed a mutual defense treaty with the Black Lodge. But what do you think the likely consequence is of a man with 11 million Twitter followers telling people he believes the U.S. government is under the influence of a demonic entity?
By the way . . . whatever happened to QAnon? Does anybody feel foolish for sitting around for years, waiting, declaring that “the storm is coming,” and then . . . nothing happened? Or when one near-apocalyptic prediction fails to pan out, do people just move on to another one?
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it yesterday, President Biden is surprised and disappointed to learn that all those big infrastructure projects – the ones he and his team touted as “shovel ready,” echoing President Obama’s promises about the 2009 stimulus — are being held up by red tape and bureaucracy. Well, you can’t blame Biden for being surprised, he’s barely spent any time working in the federal government.