Tucker Carlson: Not Surprising ‘Famous People Who Bask in Public Adulation All Day Behave Poorly When the Cameras Are Off’

By A.J. Katz 

Fox News’s Tucker Carlson is disappointed, but not particularly surprised by all of the recent sexual harassment stories coming out right now.

“It’s awful, and abuse of power is always awful, whether it be sexual power, financial power, any kind of power,” Carlson told Business Insider global editor-in-chief and chief content officer Nicholas Carlson at the Ignition conference this afternoon in New York. “But it’s also common that people in power abuse their power. That’s a function of human nature. The tales are jarring, jaw-dropping, and shocking especially when it’s happening in your industry and people you’re familiar with. But if you take three steps back, it shouldn’t surprise you that famous people who bask in public adulation all day long behave poorly when the cameras are off.”

Carlson on what he feels is hypocrisy being shown by NBC: “You know, I couldn’t resist noting on my program that NBC fired Billy Bush for the crime of laughing,  which he apologized for, but squelched the Harvey Weinstein story that Ronan Farrow wrote and ended up selling to the New Yorker. I thought his was a great story. Now why did they do that? I don’t know, but I think it’s a fair question that they still haven’t answered. That annoyed me. But look, I worked at NBC for four years, and I have friends over there. There are good people, I feel sorry for them.”

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(Carlson called for NBC News president Noah Oppenheim to be fired last month).

On his role in the cable news landscape: “I think of my role as different from someone hosting a show on another channel. I feel like almost all of the other news outlets that I see, and I’ve worked at almost all of them, are kind of sync in terms of what stories they feel are important and how they report the stories,” said Carlson. “That’s OK. I’m not mad about it, but I think there ought to be a role for someone who tells stories that aren’t covered by everybody else, and is looking at things in a different way. I believe that way.”

Carlson says the media has been concentrating on Russia too much, and feels there is too much attention being paid to Pres. Trump. He said the president “doesn’t get enough credit for being hysterical,” but admitted that he disapproves of Trump tweeting “at all.” (Carlson hates Twitter in general).

“He’s moderately interesting, and he’s President of the United States, so he’s obviously powerful and important,” Carlson added. “But if you’re programming your entire schedule around one guy and his tweets, it’s possible you might be missing other stories.”

Carlson said he never votes in presidential elections and didn’t vote in this past election. But he votes in local D.C. elections because he lives there and feels it’s important, adding “I’m actually registered with a party that I sincerely despise, and that’s the Democratic Party. But I’m registered because I live in the District and it’s a one-party state.”

He started playing with the moderator and the audience a bit at the end: “I always vote for the more corrupt candidate over the idealist. I like the person who is taking payoffs from developers and leaves me alone. I vote for the status quo, corrupt, criminal operation candidate in D.C., and I’m really happy with that.”

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