John Jefferson
They say that when you need something to work most, it doesn’t. So when I awoke to hear that Hurricane Helene had knocked out our power and we had limited cell reception on the day I was set to interview Tucker Carlson, I was worried. I ended up calling him from the parking lot of my favorite local coffee shop; inclement circumstances aside, he did not disappoint, making bold and heterodox arguments about the national interest, the state of the country, and, especially, whether America needs to worry about Iran.
Our conversation began with the usual exchange of pleasantries—a surreal experience, having a voice you’ve listened to for so many years actually respond to you in real time. I asked him to bear with me, saying that I wasn’t a real journalist. The response: a quintessential Tucker laugh. “No no, it’s quite alright, journalists are all loathsome creatures anyway,” he said.
Reassured, I asked him how he felt his nearly completed tour went, and whether it lived up to his expectations. Like most who have been on long trips, individual days and experiences all seemed to merge together for him, but he seemed happy as a whole, “It has been truly incredible,” he said. “Living in a very remote part of e I understandably don’t get out that much, but I really felt that I needed to actually be on the ground and see our country and its people.”
I asked what his favorite stop had been. “Oh Pennsylvania, for sure,” he replied without hesitation. “I hunt and fish a lot and outside of its major cities, Pennsylvania is unbelievably beautiful and possibly one of the best places in the country. It’s a shame that they have such a sinister governor who signs bombs with a grin. Truly evil stuff.”
I asked what his interactions with people on the tour had been like. Sounding somewhat dejected, he replied, “There seems to be a lot of chaos, a lot of lying going on in our country. I am amazed at the amount of blatant propaganda that people still believe.” Asked what he meant specifically, he answered, “This stuff with Iran.”
I asked whether he meant the FBI’s assertion that there were teams of Iranian-backed groups in the US trying to kill Donald Trump. “You don’t really believe that, do you?” he interrupted. I denied it. “Okay, good. Because, you know, I’ve been around the block, and since 2003 it seems like everyone in the intel community shouts ‘Iran, Iran, Iran,’ every time there is a national security threat,” he said. “It’s truly shocking that people, especially those on the right, still believe that Iran is our greatest national security threat.”
I asked Tucker for his reaction to Mark Levin’s recent suggestion that the United States should treat Iran’s speculated involvement in the assassination attempts on Donald Trump as an act of war. He scoffed, “That’s truly deranged. Hard to believe and take seriously. Anyone who is repeating this line about Iran is a liar. Realistically, Iran does not want a hot war with the United States and has tried to avoid one for the last year. It is one of the most sinister lies out there.”
I asked him whether he thought, despite Donald Trump’s anti-war posturing and his selection of J.D. Vance as a running mate, the neocon/hawkish wing of the Republican Party had been fully ousted from influence of the electorate. “Are you kidding me? We haven’t exorcized the neocon establishment at all!” he said with a laugh. “You have to understand though that this is not a right/left thing. Just look at the second guy who tried to kill Trump. Fundamentally, he believes the same exact things that someone like Bill Kristol, David Frum, and Victoria Nuland believe.”
“That’s the scary thing. You have all of these people telling us that Iran, Russia, North Korea, are the greatest threats to our national security and I just simply don’t believe that,” he continued. “It really seems at this point that the Democratic Party and the national security establishment are in fact our greatest threats to national security.”
The national security establishment—the blob—weighs heavily on Carlson these days. “It’s really concerning how most Americans don’t understand that we are actually in a hot war with Russia—right now—and by extension how close we are to nuclear war. It’s embarrassing how many pundits casually throw around the idea of nuclear exchange but we really have no direct experience of what that would look like in the 21st century,” he said.
By Carlson’s lights, the nuclear order is more fragile and, if broken, more dangerous than it was during the warmest parts of the Cold War. “The two examples we do have are completely antiquated in terms of the tech and potential aftermath that it’s not even comparable,” he said. “What happens if a nuclear bomb hits a nuclear reactor? We don’t know. I’m really fearful it would set off a chain reaction that would destroy the entire world. In a year, no one could be alive if we continue sleep-walking into a wider war with Russia.”
I asked him what he thought about Vance, who had spoken at one of Carlson’s tour appearances. “He was undoubtedly the best and quite frankly the only [vice-presidential] selection. Any other would bear little if any resemblance to Trump’s voters,” he said. “And look, even if I didn’t, and don’t, agree with him on every single issue, the voters have a right to get what they want. That is the kind of system we have.”
This gets to the heart of the populist idea. “We elect people to represent us and our interests, which is why all of the stuff we were just talking about [Iran and Russia] is so baffling to me,” Carlson said. “Like, where is the public on this? Where is the outrage that we are sleep-walking into a nuclear war? People are supposed to own their representatives and representatives need to vote with the will of the people to earn their consent.”
Hence the problem. “That is how this is supposed to work, but it’s not and that is a real shame,” he continued. “I guess the only real consolation is that the people that I’ve met on this tour have really been anti-war, anti-violence and are deeply concerned with the current trajectory of U.S. foreign policy.”
I asked whether he had any predictions about the presidential election. He balked at giving a firm prediction, but said, “Regardless of the outcome, we’ve changed so much as a country.”
We both agreed that even 2019 feels like a completely different world. “The funniest thing to me is seeing the number of Republicans in group chats I’m in who are supporting the liberal mayor of New York because of his indictment.” he observed wryly.
He then added, unprompted, “You know, the best moment in this entire presidential campaign wasn’t the cat memes or Joe Biden stepping aside, but was when Trump announced the other day that he was going to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent. That was truly brave! I never send candidates money but that actually made me consider donating to his campaign.”
I asked him to elaborate. “It goes to what we were talking about earlier—who is more an enemy of the American people, the Mullahs in Iran or Chase Bank?” he asked. “It’s just crazy to me that all Abrahamic religions have prohibitions against usury and somehow we as a society are okay with banks sending out unsolicited credit card applications to 20-year-olds who are still in college and charging people 25 to 30 percent interest, saddling them with debt for the rest of their lives? We used to call that loan sharking, now I guess it’s just normal.”
I asked him whether there was anything else specifically that had changed, noting that it seemed like ordinary Americans were still too nice and that our ancestors would not have stood for half the things our government has done the last few decades. “People aren’t necessarily ‘too nice,’” he said. “They just, understandably, believe in the system they grew up in.”
“For my generation you were taught that you needed to respect our institutions like the media or the intelligence community. That is why we voted and paid taxes, and why I still do,” he continued. “But I wonder how many people who were at January 6th had pocket Constitutions and thought they were defending a system they believed in, and who now, after seeing what happened, still believe in that system. A lot of people don’t believe in the system anymore and that is not a good thing. I’ve been in a lot of places where the system has broken down and force is the only thing that rules, and it’s not pretty.”
Probing further, I asked if that made him worried for the outcome of the election regardless of who won. “There is no point in getting all depressed and doomscrolling [sic] about this,” he said. “Everything in life is a mixed bag. Obviously I think it would be better if one side won, but looking at human history there have always been representatives of good and evil and there will be until it ends.”
I asked what parents should be doing to raise virtuous children in a culture that seems out to corrupt them and steal their innocence at every turn. “Having that perspective of reality being a mixed bag is critical. It is a natural deterrent to ideology and insanity,” he said.
“Another thing that we have completely forgotten in the West, but used to be a hallmark of it, is the idea of loyalty to your family and your wider clan.” he continued, adding that parents should foster that sense of loyalty as a tide against what he called “substitutions” for family.
“Things are changing, though, and what people in the last century substituted for family, like a career, politics, and media, are now being reexamined, and a lot of people are returning to and craving the real,” he said.
The conversation seemed to be coming to an end. I asked him about books. He said that he loved them still, and that when he had a back injury a few years ago he posted himself up in his family’s barn where he has some 1,200-plus volumes and read for an entire month while he recovered. He is a fan of P.G. Wodehouse; he said that he tries to avoid reading books published after 1945, as “most books since then contain nothing but lies.”
Many people have grievances and gripes against Tucker, but the one thing that people don’t see is how genuine and generous he is as a person. Our conversation lasted for about 45 minutes despite his grueling tour duties, all because he wanted to help a publication that he felt was one of the few that provides real “intellectual stimulation.” (Which is to say, please subscribe!)
Nor was this episode exceptional. In 2017, a few weeks after he had taken over Fox News’ 8:00 PM timeslot from The O’Reilly Factor, Carlson came to my alma mater to be the keynote speaker at our annual dinner (a role he filled at the last minute due to scheduling conflicts with the notably difficult former Vice President, Mike Pence). During his visit, he spent over an hour privately with us students fielding sophomoric questions with genuine insight and patience and making a point to thank the hostesses and kitchen staff at our university for his meal.
Perhaps it is this quality, more than the intellectual boldness or the quick wit, that sets Carlson apart from his fellows—a certain decency, a humanity. Wherever he’s going, long may he ride.
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