On a latest episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” a prime-time present on Fox Information, Tucker Carlson launched his first visitor, Mark McCloskey, on the finish of an extended section on how “self-defense is changing into unlawful” in America. McCloskey and his spouse, Patricia, have been the St. Louis couple made briefly and ignominiously well-known for brandishing weapons at Black Lives Matter protesters exterior their Midwestern palazzo. “So that they’re racist,” Carlson mentioned, with a squeaky, cartoonish emphasis.
“There’s that silly voice,” Kat Abughazaleh, a twenty-three-year-old senior video producer for the liberal watchdog Media Issues for America, mentioned. She and I have been watching Carlson’s present in side-by-side cubicles at her group’s workplaces, in Washington, D.C. Abughazaleh, a pair of sun shades perched on her head and a vape pen at all times inside attain, was flagging moments from the episode to submit on-line. One clip, of Carlson declaring that “the F.B.I., as a corporation, has joined within the hunt for Christians,” went instantly to Twitter. “I used to be so excited to listen to that hilarious Christian line—it was so good,” she informed me throughout a industrial break. One other clip, an interview with the “pro-life Spider-Man”—a baby-faced younger man who climbs buildings with out ropes to protest abortion—was saved for an end-of-week roundup. (“Abortion is rather like climbing a skyscraper,” the pro-life Spider-Man had mentioned. “It’s a matter of life or dying.”) Abughazaleh movies her roundups on Fridays and posts them to TikTok, the place she’s constructing a following. Her hottest video, which features a clip of a Fox Information host evaluating Washington, D.C., to Somalia, has slightly below one million views.
“I watch Tucker Carlson so that you don’t need to,” the bio areas of her social-media accounts learn. Abughazaleh has been professionally watching Carlson, who has round three million viewers an evening, for practically two years. “You don’t know Fox Information till you’re watching it for a job,” she mentioned. “You see all these patterns emerge.” The Fox universe is a spot with a distinct “information” sense than many of the nation, she mentioned—narratives about I.R.S. armies, meals shortages, race wars, and predatory trans activists—however its area of interest story strains are doubtless predictive of what we’ll be speaking about over the subsequent two lengthy marketing campaign years. Although, in Abughazaleh’s view, Carlson has floundered a bit for the reason that midterms. “I believe he’s nonetheless sort of misplaced proper now,” she mentioned. “He’s probably not positive what route to take it.”
Others members of the Media Issues group who watch Fox’s prime-time lineup appeared to agree. “He’s pro-smoking unexpectedly,” Andrew Lawrence, the deputy director of fast response, mentioned. Even critical subjects typically include a gimmick hooked up. A latest theme on Carlson’s present is meals shortages supposedly brought on by the conflict in Ukraine; Tiara Soleim, a.ok.a. the Rooster Woman, a throaty-voiced blonde who was as soon as a contestant on “The Bachelor,” has come on to speak about it. On a latest present, Carlson spent a section dissecting a kiss hey between Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff on the State of the Union; the accompanying graphic learn “Spouse Swap.” Carlson’s present, apart from the opening monologue, is manically paced, and visitors typically have hassle getting a phrase in edgewise. This, paired with Carlson’s elastic face and goofy voices, can lend the hour a carnival really feel. However the present’s rhetoric is muscular and alarmist. On the episode I watched with Abughazaleh, the conservative media pundit Matt Walsh was a visitor, speaking about his anti-trans testimony earlier than the Tennessee state legislature. “He’s in favor of chopping the breasts off ladies?” Carlson mentioned, of 1 legislator. “I imply, how may anyone get to a spot the place that’s O.Ok.?”
To Abughazaleh, the usually ludicrous high quality of Carlson’s present is strictly what makes it so harmful. “Folks must know that the scary issues are silly as nicely,” she mentioned. “They both go all in on ‘Oh, my God, that is so humorous’ and ‘Fox Information is technically leisure,’ or they go all in on ‘That is so scary, blah blah blah.’ It’s each issues. Two issues will be true without delay.” On the similar time, maybe as a result of she follows him so intently, Abughazaleh is skeptical of the standard knowledge that Carlson is likely one of the strongest folks in america. She and the opposite Media Issues researchers all appeared satisfied that it was extra the 8 P.M. Fox time slot that bestowed energy. For hundreds of thousands of viewers, “it’s only a Pavlovian response to placed on Fox Information at eight o’clock,” Lawrence mentioned. “Tucker wants the eight-o’clock hour on Fox Information far more than Fox Information wants Tucker.”
Fox Information has been the nation’s most watched cable channel for twenty-one years. That spectacular streak belies how few Individuals really watch it—the community averaged 2.33 million viewers an evening in 2022—nevertheless it stays one thing of a thought chief for the conservative motion. The community, its producers, and opinion hosts are adept at sussing out which culture-war wedge points will preserve viewers tuning in. These viewers appear to signify the G.O.P.’s main voter base—typically older, extra devoted partisans—that has propelled more and more excessive candidates into the mainstream over the previous twenty years. The community’s stars, comparable to Carlson, are savvy operators, keen to maintain rankings up, even when what they’re peddling is patently false.
A brand new authorized submitting within the Dominion Voting Programs $1.6-billion defamation swimsuit towards Fox contains textual content and e-mail messages from a variety of Fox stars, together with Carlson, exhibiting that they privately disbelieved Donald Trump’s claims of a stolen election, even whereas they put these messages on the air in an effort to maintain Trump’s devoted followers tuning in. A part of the utility of watching and documenting Fox Information’ lies in 2023—when many of the nation is acquainted with the community’s schtick—the Media Issues group mentioned, was to offer a paper path of exhausting proof. The group’s work, they identified, was cited not simply within the Dominion grievance however within the Sandy Hook households’ lawsuit towards Alex Jones and in varied legislative hearings.
Abughazaleh is a seventh-generation native of Dallas on her mom’s aspect—her grandmother was a G.O.P. political operative who gave the coat she wore to Richard Nixon’s Inauguration to Abughazaleh—and extra native to Fox Information than her followers may count on. The community was an ever-present background noise whereas rising up, and Abughazaleh was a Republican by way of highschool. However her faculty years, at George Washington College, have been dominated by the Trump Administration. She graduated, in 2020, each disgusted and fascinated by politics. “There was a number of actually icky stuff happening,” she mentioned. “So I used to be searching for extra progressive jobs.”
Abughazaleh has develop into one thing of a determine of intrigue for parts of Carlson’s viewers. She informed me that one of many present’s producers, Gregg Re, often replies to her tweets. In January, Phil Labonte, a right-wing influencer, posted a screenshot of Abughazaleh’s Tinder profile in a tweet: “I haven’t even gotten the important thing to my residence but and tinder is already tryin to hook me up with the Media Issues Tucker Carlson explainer lady.” Abughazaleh later made a visible of the demeaning, sexually express feedback that the tweet elicited and posted it to her feed: “POV: You’re a 23-year-old girl who researches right-wing extremism and a 47-year-old conservative commentator posts your relationship profile on Twitter.” Within the following weeks, Abughazaleh informed me, her Twitter following grew from round fifty thousand followers to greater than 100 thousand.
