Behold the Tucker Carlson Interview Where He Got Owned So Bad He Refused to Air It

Jack Holmes
Photo credit: Michael S. Schwartz - Getty Images
Photo credit: Michael S. Schwartz - Getty Images

From Esquire

There is nothing hugely constructive about watching Tucker Carlson get owned by a Dutch historian to the point that the Bowtie-American starts screaming insults at the academic and ultimately refuses to air the interview. In these perilous times, however, you've got to enjoy the things you can.

It will not solve many problems, unless it convinces a few of Carlson's devoted viewers that they are being sold snake oil every night and they decide to stop buying it. Because that is what Rutger Bregman ultimately exposed in Carlson: that he is, in the historian's words, "a millionaire funded by billionaires," tasked-along with the other talking heads of Fox News-with protecting the political and economic structure of the status quo while distracting the audience with propaganda that demonizes immigrants as criminals and liberals as kooky zealots who are destroying The America You Know and Love.

Sometimes, like the president he pretends it is not his job to support, Carlson adopts the aesthetics of "populism," where he bills himself as looking out for the common man against the powerful global interests represented at, say, Davos. That's where Carlson caught wind of Bregman, who spoke the truth to billionaire faces at the conference: that they simply need to stop dodging their taxes and pay more. Carlson thought Bregman would come on and pretend that he, Tucker Carlson, is not an instrument of that same order who moonlights as a Man of the People. That is not how things went.

Here is the real jam session:

BREGMAN: So I think the issue really is one of corruption, and of people being bribed, and of not being-not talking about the real issues. What the family-what the Murdoch family basically want you to do is to scapegoat immigrants instead of talking about tax avoidance. So I'm glad you're now finally raising the issue, but that's what's been happening for the last couple of years.

CARLSON: Uh huh. And I'm taking orders from the Murdochs, that's what you're saying?

BREGMAN: No, it doesn't work that directly. But I mean, you've been part of the Cato Institute, right? You've been a senior fellow there for years? You've been taking their dirty money-

CARLSON: Well, how does it work?

BREGMAN: They're funded by Koch billionaires, you know?

CARLSON: Wait, why don't you tell me how it does work?

BREGMAN: Well, it works by you taking their dirty money, it's as simple as that. You are a millionaire funded by billionaires, that's what you are.

And there it is. This is a thing of beauty. It brings to mind Andrew Gillum's simple destruction of Ron DeSantis at a Florida gubernatorial debate-one which, incredibly, did not prevent DeSantis from getting elected. The video, which Bregman was clever enough to have recorded on his end knowing Carlson might spike it, was published today by NowThis. (Carlson's producer said they "respect our audience's time too much to consider airing it.") Anyway, Bregman finished the job on Twitter today:

Carlson is no disruptor of the status quo. But lately, he is constantly reinventing himself to adopt the aesthetics of anti-establishment movements. He was a Bowtie Debate Team Conservative for most of his career, a reflection of his silver-spoon roots. But then he was suddenly a Trumpist "populist" spouting anti-immigrant propaganda on Fox News. That earned him rave reviews from the Daily Stormer, the neo-Nazi site that called him "literally our greatest ally." Now he can suddenly be found in Salon talking about putting labor before capital and insisting he loves Jacobin, a leftist publication. Maybe he really is evolving all the time. Certainly, he's getting paid all the time.

('You Might Also Like',)