Tucker Carlson’s Descent Into Madness: What the Fuck Happened to You?
Tucker Carlson, what the fuck happened to you?
Seriously.
Because I remember when you were one of the few people in political media who seemed willing to walk into a room full of bullshit, point directly at the giant steaming pile in the middle and ask why everybody was pretending they couldn’t smell it.
That Tucker Carlson was useful.
That Tucker Carlson was dangerous to powerful people.
That Tucker Carlson didn’t appear to give a flying fuck whether Republicans, Democrats, corporations, intelligence agencies, cable executives or his own audience liked the questions he was asking.
And now?
Now we’re fucking rehabilitating Hunter Biden?
Hunter. Fucking. Biden.
Are you kidding me?
What’s next? Anthony Fauci gets a cooking show?
For YEARS, conservatives were told Hunter Biden represented everything wrong with the American ruling class.
Nepotism.
Privilege.
Influence.
Drugs.
A famous last name.
A father sitting at the absolute pinnacle of American political power.
And now we’re supposed to look at Hunter like he’s some misunderstood working-class philosopher because he can be entertaining behind a microphone?
Did he bring a pipe, some crack and an eight ball?
Because apparently we’re having a fucking party.
And no, before somebody deliberately misses the point, I’m not mocking addiction.
Addiction is brutal. Recovery deserves respect.
But recovering from addiction doesn’t make you Socrates.
Being funny doesn’t make you principled.
Being interesting doesn’t make you trustworthy.
And saying something Tucker Carlson’s audience wants to hear doesn’t magically erase everything that same audience spent years being told mattered.
That’s what makes this so fucking ridiculous.
But Hunter isn’t really the story here.
Tucker is.
Hunter Biden is just the latest flashing neon sign telling us how far Tucker Carlson has traveled from the guy many of us once respected.
Tucker built his brand on skepticism.
Now I’m skeptical of him.
He taught millions of people not to blindly trust institutions.
Good.
So why the fuck should we blindly trust Tucker Carlson?
He told people to question narratives.
Okay, Tucker.
We’re questioning yours.
He told people to follow incentives.
Great advice.
So now we’re looking at yours.
He taught an audience to recognize when powerful people reinvent themselves, reposition themselves and sell a new story when the old one stops working.
And somehow we’re supposed to turn that part of our brains off when the person doing the reinventing is Tucker Carlson?
Fuck that.
You don’t get immunity from the standards you taught everybody else to use.
And that’s where Glenn Beck comes in.
Because Glenn proves this isn’t about demanding ideological purity.
I don’t agree with Glenn Beck on everything.
But I know what the fuck Glenn Beck believes.
There’s a difference.
Glenn has changed positions. He’s admitted mistakes. He’s reconsidered things.
That’s called being a human being.
But underneath those changes, you can still identify the same basic moral framework.
He’ll criticize Democrats.
He’ll criticize Republicans.
He’ll criticize Trump.
He’ll criticize his own fucking audience.
Sometimes I agree with him.
Sometimes I think he’s completely wrong.
But I rarely sit there wondering, “Does Glenn actually believe this shit?”
With Tucker, I’m asking that question more and more.
And Tucker should understand exactly how devastating that is.
Because once your audience stops debating whether you’re right and starts debating whether you’re sincere, you’ve got a much bigger fucking problem.
Tucker Carlson used to sell skepticism.
Now skepticism is coming for Tucker Carlson.
And he doesn’t get to complain about it.
He fucking taught us.
That’s the part I find almost poetic.
You spent years telling people:
Don’t worship politicians.
Don’t trust institutions.
Don’t swallow propaganda.
Question authority.
Follow the money.
Look for the incentive.
Pay attention when the story suddenly changes.
Okay.
We are.
And we’re looking directly at you.
Maybe this really is Tucker’s sincere political evolution.
Fine.
Then explain it.
Explain the principles connecting all these dots.
Explain how we traveled from exposing elite corruption to treating Hunter Biden like the fascinating bad boy at the political cocktail party.
Explain where the consistent philosophy is.
Because “the establishment hates this person” is not a fucking political philosophy.
Contrarianism isn’t courage.
Being against whatever Washington supports doesn’t automatically make you correct.
And being willing to say something outrageous doesn’t automatically make you brave.
Sometimes an outrageous statement is courageous.
Sometimes it’s just fucking outrageous.
There was a time when Tucker seemed to understand the difference.
I’m not convinced he does anymore.
And that’s a tragedy because Tucker Carlson didn’t need to become this.
He already had something most political commentators would kill for:
An enormous audience that trusted him to tell them when everybody else was full of shit.
Do you understand how valuable that is?
Do you understand how rare that is?
And instead of protecting that credibility like gold, Tucker increasingly seems determined to test just how much weird shit his audience will swallow because he’s the one feeding it to them.
No.
Absolutely fucking not.
You don’t get to spend years teaching people independent thought and then become offended when they independently decide you’ve lost the plot.
And I’m tired of this idea that criticizing Tucker means somebody suddenly loves the establishment.
Bullshit.
I can distrust Washington AND distrust Tucker Carlson.
Watch me.
I can think the intelligence agencies deserve scrutiny AND think Tucker has gone off the fucking rails.
I can believe the media lies AND believe Tucker Carlson can be wrong.
I can believe Hunter Biden was treated unfairly about one thing without pretending the man should be carved into Mount Rushmore.
This is the disease infecting American politics:
Nobody is allowed to have an individual thought anymore.
You have to buy the whole fucking package.
If Tucker is right about one thing, Tucker must be right about everything.
If Trump is wrong about one thing, Trump must be wrong about everything.
If Hunter says something funny, apparently we’re halfway to making him Secretary of State.
Enough.
Stop outsourcing your fucking brain.
That’s actually the lesson Tucker Carlson USED to teach.
And maybe that’s why watching his transformation pisses me off so much.
I don’t hate Tucker Carlson.
I miss Tucker Carlson.
I miss the guy who seemed more interested in exposing bullshit than becoming the center of the next political movement.
I miss the guy who made powerful people uncomfortable instead of making his own audience wonder what fucking planet they landed on.
And maybe that guy is still in there.
But I’m done pretending I can see him.
Glenn Beck has managed to evolve without becoming unrecognizable.
Tucker Carlson has become unrecognizable while calling it evolution.
That’s the difference.
And here’s the ultimate irony:
Old Tucker Carlson would have annihilated New Tucker Carlson.
He would’ve played the clips.
He would’ve shown the contradictions.
He would’ve followed the incentives.
He would’ve cocked his head, made that Tucker face and asked the exact question I’m asking now:
What the fuck happened to this guy?
Tucker sold himself for a dollar.
Hunter sold himself for crack.
But at least nobody is confused about Hunter Biden’s fucking résumé.
Tucker’s the one who taught us to question everything.
So congratulations, Tucker.
We finally listened.
And now we’re questioning you.