Into the Tuckerverse

For a huge swath of the New Right, Tucker Carlson’s 8 p.m. slot was not only a TV show; it was a portal to the Tuckerverse. The old-school idea of “the news” assumed that there were objectively important events and it was the reporter’s duty to inform the public of them. Tucker Carlson Tonight, the most popular cable news show in history, rejected this premise. Carlson pursued stories—frivolous ones full of culture-war red meat, but also more substantial ones about massive financial corruption and deaths of despair—that few major pundits had picked up. But he wasn’t just interpreting the news; he was making it. What made something newsworthy was whether it fit into the narrative.