He has more than 2.8 million people watching him every night, and in his first month airing at 9 p.m. ET, Tucker Carlson had the most-watched cable news show among younger viewers. Still Carlson is the first to admit “my views are not super interesting.”
“In a sense, he’s right,” writes McKay Coppins in a profile for The Atlantic:
Carlson’s true talent is not for political philosophizing, it’s for televised partisan combat. His go-to weapons—the smirky sarcasm, the barbed comebacks, the vicious politeness—seem uniquely designed to drive his sparring partners nuts, frequently making for terrific television. Indeed, if cable news is ultimately theater, Carlson’s nightly performance is at once provocative, maddening, cringe-inducing, and compulsively watchable. Already, in its few short months in primetime, Tucker Carlson Tonight has created more viral moments than it had any right to do.
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“I don’t ever want to get mad,” Carlson says, discussing one particular segment in December, in which he did. “I think it diminishes me and the show, and I don’t want to be that way.”
“If I find myself wanting to be mean to anyone, it’s time to stop,” he tells me.
“Does that happen sometimes?” I ask.
He glances down at his salad. “It’s happened once, yeah.”
“With who?”
“With, um, a woman from Teen Glamour.”
I know instantly what interview he’s talking about. “You mean Teen Vogue?”
“Whatever.”