The Journalist Who Broke Free from Fox: Tucker Carlson
The Journalist Who Broke Free from Fox: Tucker Carlson
The establishment can't stand a journalist who marches to the beat of his own drum.
When people don’t know who to turn to for their information, they lose trust in each other over time, while the opposite rings true too.
In this week’s Faces of Intrepidity, a series where America Mission™ explores the brave and dauntless figures that the culture war has to offer, we’re profiling journalist & commentator Tucker Carlson.
Tucker hit the news scene as a fact-checker, broke into the big leagues as an interviewer, and has become one of the biggest names in news media. His reputation as a fervent challenger of leftist narratives has made him notorious in the news.
Following in his Father’s Footsteps
Tucker Carlson was born in San Francisco in 1969 to a former gonzo journalist father and a local artist mother. In 1976, his parents divorced and his mom abandoned the family to flee to France when Tucker was 6. Tucker and his brother never saw her again.
Tucker’s dad moved the Carlson boys to the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California while Tucker was in first grade and raised them there. He attended La Jolla Country Day School.
Tucker briefly enrolled at Collège du Léman, a boarding school in Geneva, Switzerland, but was kicked out. Afterward, he attended St. George's boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island. He started dating his future wife, Susan Andrews, the headmaster's daughter.
Tucker graduated in 1991 with a B.A. in history from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. After college, Tucker tried to join the CIA, but his application was denied. He decided to pursue a career in journalism after receiving his father’s encouragement.
Sometime after graduating from Trinity, Tucker became a fact-checker for Policy Review. After that, he worked as an opinion writer at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper in Little Rock, Arkansas. Tucker left to join The Weekly Standard in 1995.
Tucker interviewed then-Governor George W. Bush for Talk magazine in 1999. The interview caused trouble for Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign and led to the Bush team claiming that Tucker had mischaracterized him.
Carlson worked as a columnist for New York magazine and Reader's Digest. Over the years, he wrote for Esquire, Slate, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and The Wall Street Journal.
The Big Leagues
Tucker co-hosted The Spin Room on CNN. A year later, he became a co-host for CNN's Crossfire in 2001. In 2003, Carlson was hired by PBS to host Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, which ran concurrently with Carlson's Crossfire. The show launched in 2004.
Comedian and The Daily Show host Jon Stewart called Tucker out on Crossfire in 2004. After that, CNN chose not to renew his contract. Tucker later said that he resigned from Crossfire months before the Jon Stewart incident because he didn’t like how things were being run there.
Carlson announced he was leaving his PBS show roughly a year after it started in 2005, despite money being approved for another season. Carlson left his PBS show to focus on his new MSNBC show Tucker and said that although PBS was better than his previous employers, they were still problematic.
In 2006, Tucker competed on Season 3 of Dancing with the Stars, but was the first contestant to be eliminated. That same year, Tucker stopped wearing his signature bow tie.
In 2009, Fox News hired Tucker as a Fox News contributor. He appeared alongside Greg Gutfeld and Bret Baier while occasionally filling in for Sean Hannity. Tucker also co-founded The Daily Caller in 2010, working as their editor-in-chief and an opinion writer.
Carlson became a co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend in April 2013. He joined Alisyn Camerota and Clayton Morris on weekend mornings. From 2016 on, Tucker began hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News.
The Fox Fallout
In 2018, an Antifa activist group protested outside Tucker’s home in Washington, D.C. They attacked his home and vandalized Carlson's driveway with a spray-painted anarchist symbol. In 2019, Tucker faced calls for firing and his show lost advertisers after Media Matters resurfaced remarks he had made over several years to the radio show Bubba the Love Sponge concerning women.
Later that year, Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Fox News after Carlson spoke negatively of her, but a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit. After Tucker's critical remarks about the Black Lives Matter movement, some companies pulled their advertising from the show. Notable examples included Disney, T-Mobile, and Papa John's.
In February 2021, Tucker struck a multi-year deal with Fox News. That same year, he started hosting a show on Fox Nation called Tucker Carlson Today and releasing additional content for the network. Tucker Carlson Tonight became one of the highest-rated cable news shows in the U.S., with millions of viewers, beating out fellow Fox News pundits Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
While on Fox, he became a beacon for those who had lost trust in the legacy media. Tucker made headlines for his controversial takes on immigration, the intelligence community, and more. He touched on topics most other journos wouldn’t, like the COVID-19 coverup, the "Great Replacement", or the Twitter Files.
However, good things often don’t last. In April 2023, Fox News fired Carlson and the executive producer of his evening show. In his final sign-off, he told his viewers he would "be back on Monday". A rotation of guest hosts filled Carlson's old slot until a permanent replacement was found. It was announced in June that Jesse Waters would permanently replace Tucker.
Tucker on X
Tucker’s post-Fox adventures have been quite interesting. He founded Tucker Carlson News (TCN) in 2023. Tucker has interviewed several high-profile individuals and released that content to X.
Carlson did a sit-down interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin opined about Russian history and jabbed Tucker on his past CIA application attempt. As of this Faces edition, the interview has been viewed on X over 200 million times.
President Trump snubbed an RNC debate to sit down with Tucker on X back in August 2023. In true style, Trump talked smack about the people debating to replace him. Tucker used his time to ask Trump about former AG Bill Barr and allege that Barr lied about Epstein’s death.
Tucker also asked Trump if he believed that Epstein had killed himself. Trump said he didn’t know for sure, but that he believed that Epstein probably killed himself. He was sympathetic to Tucker’s opposing view.
Tucker and Trump then shared this exchange:
Tucker Carlson (07:11):
So the reason I’m asking you is, I’m looking at the trajectory since 2015, when you got into politics for real, and then won. It started with protests against you, massive protests, organized protests by the Left, and then it moved to impeachment twice.
Donald Trump (07:28):
Right.
Tucker Carlson (07:28):
And now indictment. I mean, the next stage is violence. Are you worried that they’re going to try and kill you? Why wouldn’t they try and kill you? Honestly?
Donald Trump (07:36):
They’re savage animals. They are people that are sick, really sick. You have great people in the Democrat Party. You have great people that are Democrats. Most of the people in our country are fantastic, and I’m representing everybody. I’m not just Republicans or Conservative. I represent everybody. I’m the president of everybody.
This kind of stuff is exactly why Tucker deserved a spot in Faces of Intrepidity. He makes sure to ask the relevant questions before most can come up with them. Tucker and Trump were growing more aware of the left’s increasingly unhinged nature. That interview was viewed over 250 million times.
Last month’s assassination attempt on Trump confirms that Tucker was right to ask that question of him. For America Mission™’s coverage on that and more, check out last time’s Faces of Intrepidity.
In September of last year, Tucker interviewed libertarian anarcho-capitalist economist and then-Argentine presidential candidate Javier Milei. They discussed the state of Argentine politics and Milei offered advice to Americans and Donald Trump, warning against the dangers of gender ideology and other forms of neo-Marxist socialism gaining ground in the west. Their interview together was viewed over 400 million times on X. Milei went on to win the Argentina presidential election in a landslide a few months later.
The slow demise of legacy media
We’re now less than 80 days from the election. Things have gotten crazy enough as is but buckle up because the ride isn’t over. Tucker’s former employers are now astroturfing Veep Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz’s campaign. For more on her, check out Faces of Tyranny.
Thankfully, the legacy media is dying out because people are increasingly sick and tired of their bullshit. Trust in mass media has dipped back down to record lows as of last year. Nature is healing.
The internet and social media have allowed journalists and reporters once locked into legacy media to break free from the corporate shackles that bound them before in this brave new world. Tucker is one example of that and more will likely follow in his footsteps in the future. The legacy media will one day go the way of the Dodo bird and America Mission™ will be here to report on that and a lot more.
Check out America Mission™’s timeline
on Tucker Carlson’s past.
Thanks for reading America Mission™! Stay tuned for next time’s edition of Faces of Intrepidity. My name is Mike Melo and I made America my mission.
We sincerely hope you join us — the many who’ve decided that America is their mission, too. If you enjoyed this week’s Faces of Intrepidity, please follow America Mission™ and Mike Melo on X. Thanks for reading!
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