For Carlson and Fox News their ratings trumped truth

TUCKER Carlson is 53 years old. Born in San Francisco and the graduate of an exclusive prep school in Rhode Island (where he met and later married the headmaster’s daughter) and an exclusive private college in Connecticut, Carlson has a beautiful family, a fat bank account and a lovely house in the Washington, DC, area.

For the past seven years, he has starred in a ratingsdominant prime-time show on the Fox News network.

This morning, he is at the centre of American political life. It’s fair to wonder if there is a bigger story today in the US than Tucker Carlson. There are two principal reasons for this.

First, as more information from within the inner councils of Fox News leaks out into the public arena every day in connection with the huge libel suit filed against the network by voting machine manufacturer Dominion Voting Systems, Carlson’s apparently unedited personal views about former president Donald Trump have been highlighted.

Two years ago, just before the January 6, 2021 assault on the US capitol by Trump supporters, Carlson texted the following to a friend: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately. ... I can’t handle much more of this.”

Carlson was apparently referring to Trump’s insistence that he had actually won the 2020 presidential election – an election that it was abundantly clear two months afterward that he had in fact lost decisively.

In a different text message, Carlson said “we’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for (Trump’s four years as president), because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”