Supporters of Both Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson Are Losing Their Minds

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | March 10, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | March 10, 2023 |

I was visiting my conservative in-laws in Florida a couple of weeks ago, and my step-father-in-law said something interesting. He says he watches both Fox News and MSNBC every morning to see how the two networks cover the same topics. However, he added, in recent years, it’s been harder for him to get a sense of how both sides cover a topic because they never talk about the same things anymore.

I didn’t see much point in getting into it with the man, but it’s clear that Fox News basically exists in an alternate world of news. My step-father-in-law also added what I thought was a weirdly nice thing to say for a conservative: “I believe Fox News, but for the sake of you and your kids’ generations, I hope MSNBC is right.” Thanks?

That was as political as our conversation got that week, although I was curious — though not curious enough to get into it — what someone who only watches Fox News and MSNBC must think of Donald Trump, because from what I gather, MSNBC mostly trashes him and — with some exceptions — Fox News tries to ignore him and hopes he goes away.

It’ll be interesting (a train wreck) to see how coverage of Trump shapes up as we head toward 2024. In part, that’s because now we all know that Tucker Carlson “passionately hates” Trump, but so far, fans of both Trump and Tucker Carlson are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to deny it. To wit (from Mediatite):

Serial tweeter and Trump supporter Brigitte Gabriel speculated that the messages were not real, writing “I hope this isn’t true. I’ve always really liked Tucker Carlson’s show and would hate to think he’s been lying to us.”

Curt Schilling, a former standout MLB pitcher turned host for Outkick, another outlet owned by Fox Corporation, replied by attributing the appearance of Carlson’s disdain for Trump to a robot’s interference.

“In the day and age of AI,” there could be “no way” the messages were real, submitted Schilling, only inches away from theorizing that we’re living in the Matrix.

Robot interference? Bruh.

One place that is gleeful about the disdain that Tucker Carlson has for Trump is Newsmax, and specifically Eric Bolling, the former Fox News anchor fired for sexual harassment and whose Nexsmax show competes against Tucker Carlson’s. He had on Kari Lake (friend of Mel Gibson) and was not shy about trashing Carlson. From The Daily Beast:

“You know, this whole revelation of the emails that Tucker Carlson at Fox was texting or emailing to—or texting to some of his producers and whatnot,” Bolling said. “And one of them is really disturbing to me. It’s ‘I hate him passionately’—that Tucker said about President Trump.”

He continued: “I mean, how, how do you, like, I think people are giving Tucker a pass on this, but I just can’t. I just can’t get past this, Kari. I can’t understand how a guy who can portray himself as a huge Trump fan on television, saying he hates him passionately, is very, very much looking forward to the day he didn’t have to cover Trump being in the White House every day.”

Although right-wingers won’t hear about all the damaging Fox revelations by watching Fox, they are getting a big healthy dose of it on Newsmax! https://t.co/SjbumOxrsa

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) March 9, 2023

The 2024 Republican primary, in other words, is shaping up to be a battle not just between DeSantis and Trump but Fox News and Trump World networks like Newsmax and OAN. Obviously, all the right-wing conservatives will probably back the winner, but we can hope they destroy each other before then. It’s going to be a hell of a year for a network caught between two candidates, billion-dollar lawsuits, and popular personalities at odds with the nominal leader of the Republican party.

In the meantime, I am just going to take some small solace in the fact that my step-father-in-law hasn’t resorted to watching Newsmax because, in 2023, the closest thing to a “reasonable Republican” is a Republican who doesn’t believe that January 6th was a peaceful protest or that Tucker Carlson’s texts have been taken over by robots.

Then again, maybe it won’t matter in the end, because an indictment against Trump is (finally) likely in — of all cases — the one involving hush money to Stormy Daniels.