O’Reilly and Tucker Carlson: Fox’s New One-Two Punch of Pro-Trump Rhetoric

On a recent edition of Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, the host spent some time debating with a guest who felt President Trump’s immigration ban was a bad idea. When it comes to allowing Syrians into the country, Carlson had a bottom-line litmus test: “What’s in it for America?” he asked. The guest was taken aback, and rightly so: Since when do people lawfully entering America have to prove what dollar amount they’re going to contribute to the economy?

But that’s the way it goes on Tucker Carlson Tonight, which has replaced The Kelly File and which, along with its lead-in, The O’Reilly Factor, gives Fox News a nightly one-two punch of pro-Trump rhetoric. (Fox’s third prime-time hour, Hannity, packs no punch: it’s a nightly, gummy smooch — a prissy peck on President Trump’s cheek.)

There’s a bold, fresh trend on The Factor these days: O’Reilly’s slavish devotion to supporting everything Trump utters is something new for the self-styled, two-fisted Sgt. Fury of Fox News. He had long fancied himself an independent voice — don’t call him a conservative! — but it seems clear he’s read the same reports we all have that Trump watches Fox and is taking his talking points from the network. As a result, O’Reilly’s signature “Talking Points Memo” has become a rough draft of opinions he’d like Trump to echo later that evening in a presidential tweet, or cut and pasted into Sean Spicer’s White House press briefing the next day.

O’Reilly has become remarkably gullible; I’ll give you two examples. One, he persists in peddling the idea that there’s a Hollywood-liberal vengeance squad discriminating against celebrities who are pro-Trump. To prove it, he brought on two men who very nearly fail to even qualify as celebrities these days: Scott Baio and Joe Piscopo. The most evidence Baio could muster was when he said, “a woman accosted me” at “a school event for my daughter” and evidently made some hostile remarks to him. Baio said he “hasn’t lost a job” due to his politics, “but I’m sure it happens.” As for Piscopo, his response was, “Wow: Not happened to me at all.” Way to assemble proof for your argument, Bill!

A second example: O’Reilly has bought into such right-wing fantasies as the idea that the recent women’s march was completely bankrolled by millionaire liberal George Soros. On the Jan. 23 Factor, O’Reilly thundered, “That wasn’t a spontaneous event. It was organized! By far-left groups which received millions of dollars from the liberal activist George Soros. … Soros is manipulating protests behind the scenes! … Some of the top march organizers were Democratic operatives!” “Operatives” is one of those weasel words that can mean anything from appointed official to any citizen who once voted for Jimmy Carter; it’s meaningless in this context.

Over on Tucker Carlson Tonight, the producers love to make their pudgy pugilist into a brawler: The most-frequently used chyron running beneath Tucker’s opening segment uses the tough-guy phrase “takes on” (emphasis mine): “Tucker Takes On Democratic Congressman”! “Tucker Takes On Buzzfeed Editor-in-Chief”! “Tucker Takes On University of Connecticut Professor”! What’s next? “Tucker Takes On Elementary-School Lunch Lady”?

Carlson’s method is to invite a guest on with whom he disagrees, then paraphrase the guest’s position into an absurd exaggeration, and then ask the guest to justify Carlson’s misleading misinterpretation of the guest’s own words. Combine this with Carlson’s habit of hooting over the guest’s response (“That’s absurd!” “You’re making no sense!”) and it leaves the impressionable viewer with the idea that Carlson has steamrolled over his opponent. Or as the Internet regularly phrases it, “Tucker Carlson DESTROYS” this-or-that on-camera foe.

Carlson positions himself as a younger, feisty new contrast to O’Reilly, but he’s in lockstep with The Factor. On Jan. 25, he did a segment about Sally Boynton-Brown, an Idaho Democrat who has been widely ridiculed as a white person seen in a film clip saying “my job is to shut other white people down” whenever they show evidence of “white privilege.” Now, you never see Fox News jump on a story about discrimination faster than when the perceived victim is … white. Happens all the time on the channel. In fact, it happened just the night before, when O’Reilly ran the exact same story on his show.

I guess it was O’Reilly and Carlson’s way of making sure that their No. 1 fan — the new leader of the now-sorta-Free World — didn’t miss this point, in case it merited a presidential tweet.

The O’Reilly Factor and Tucker Carlson Tonight air weeknights at 8 and 9 p.m. on Fox News.