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When I first met Tucker Carlson in the summer of 2017, I sat down in front of the broad, sturdy wooden desk in his Fox News office expecting to discuss my role in spearheading the Caller's new video operation.
I introduced myself and Tucker replied, "Richie McGinniss? That sounds like a famous person's name!" One thing even Tucker's adversaries can't deny after meeting him, he is a charming guy.
I had just started my job at The Daily Caller, a company that he founded in 2010, while Tucker had just taken over the prime-time 8 PM slot vacated by Bill O'Reilly after some salacious revelations.
Despite the notoriety of his new gig, Tucker was more interested in hearing about where I came from and what made me tick.
I had just lost my father and, as an actual family man rather than pretending to be one on TV, Tucker wanted to know more about how my family was doing after the loss, and who my dad was. I mentioned that, though he was a doctor, my dad and I watched the news together every night growing up, and my dad's predictions of what would come of the Iraq War were spot on. I also told him that we often made fun of the robotic voices of the correspondents, whose on-camera personae were a far cry from their personalities in real life.
I had worked at MSNBC where I should have been fired, and Tucker laughed because he was actually fired by them. Tucker was not surprised to hear that when I worked at MSNBC, the newsroom was a sterile and solemn environment. It was like the funeral home of a dying institution, while the Daily Caller newsroom was full of young people yelling at each other about every news topic under the sun. From interns to the editor-in-chief, this flat hierarchy allowed for everyone to argue their ideas as verbosely as they liked. And for those who may question how free and open the heart of this nascent media company was, just ask Geoff Ingersoll, who was my boss while I worked there and whom I put in a headlock just for fun.
Even back in 2017, Tucker agreed that in a strange way the left had become the rigid and dogmatic ones, and it just so happened that the other side of the spectrum now represented the best incubator for new ideas. This brought us to the differences between the digital video and television mediums.
"Joe Rogan is the father of my generation," I declared.
Tucker slammed his hands on his desk in animated surprise and whipped back with his quizzically high-pitched prompt, "Really?"
Perhaps it was because Rogan and Tucker are about the same age or perhaps it was because Tucker was subconsciously aware that he would one day appear on Rogan and become one of the most impactful individuals not on television, but on the world-wide web. Either way, Tucker was intrigued to hear more on why my generation and younger were tuning into podcasts rather than legacy news.
"Authenticity is the currency in the discourse," Tucker summarized after I finished my Rogan spiel. That line has stuck with me ever since.
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(Continued)
He recalled how hard he had battled to carve out autonomy in the cable news world, but given his evident lack of fear in getting fired, he always did the show his way and let the bosses upstairs decide whether he was worthy of a raise or the shit-can. In any event, Tucker refused to give up his personal voice to the corporate powers that be.
And since this conversation, our media landscape has changed dramatically. New media personalities like Rogan or Theo Von were largely responsible for Trump's 2024 win. Young people came out and voted for Trump because he was a change candidate who appealed to them via the channels that they watched, rather than the ones watched by the intellectual elites.
Again, the detractors can say what they want about Carlson, but if their accusations are to mean anything, then they must at least acknowledge that he says what he really thinks. And therein lies the reason why Tucker has become so successful despite the repeated efforts by media Goliaths like the New York Times to take him down. As our discourse is transposed from the old pillars of information—print or TV or radio—to the new platforms on the internet, audiences trust big media brands less.
Instead, they are choosing to trust individuals that they deem to be authentic and acting in good faith. The agenda-driven narratives that write the scripts in cable television and in the newsrooms of traditional outlets are finally being seen for what they are: corporate programs that care more about keeping their audience as captive consumers rather than telling them the truth about why America is becoming more sad and afraid by the day. Here's a hint: this business plan has more to do with pushing pharmaceuticals, cheap consumer goods, and fruitless foreign wars than informing you on who really pulls the strings and why.
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While I was covering the widespread protests and riots in 2020, this institutional inclination to tell viewers what they wanted to hear rather than what really happened became more evident than ever before. One side of the landscape only showed BLM activity when it was "mostly peaceful" while the other only focused on the most violent aspects that proved the Black Lives Matter demonstrations were inherently bad.
Regardless of where one fell on that spectrum, the pandemic and the protests made it blatantly obvious to the American public that the gatekeepers of our discourse don't give a shit about anything other than keeping multinationals like Pfizer happy, because it's through their advertising dollars that the news commentators are exorbitantly paid.
What I learned after witnessing the lockdowns and the violence during the so-called "summer of love", then covering the so-called "Capitol Insurrection" from the inside, is that the overwhelming majority of people in media are putting forth opinions that are aggregated from groupthink rather than a byproduct of their genuine beliefs.
That's why Tucker was an enigma in the space, repeatedly sharing opinions that were not in line with what the executives wanted him to say. Whether it was his questions about Dominion voting machines or January 6 instigators that ultimately got Tucker fired, we may never know. But what we do know is why people followed Tucker on his new foray into digital media: it's because people trust that no matter what the topic, Tucker will say what he truly thinks.
At its very heart, the success of Tucker's new program has to do with one thing: He is intellectually curious at a time when the rest of the media is not. He is independently minded and willing to change his views over time while the rest of America's thought leaders have become rigid and set in their ways.
We find Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson now in adjacent political camps. Not because they agree on everything, but because they have no concern with maintaining the status quo, and care more about exploring new frontiers.
The rules of the political media game are changing before our eyes. For the last century or so, this game has been refereed by the monolithic mouthpieces paid by massive corporations. But as with the printing press, the advancement of technology has shifted the paradigm and allowed anyone to jump into the arena of public debate.
We used to have our Daily Caller Christmas party at one of the bougeiest clubs in Washington, DC, the Metro Club. Everyone would get dressed to the nines and I, being somewhat of a contrarian, would come up with a new way to violate the dress code every year. The first year I snuck in wearing sandals that said FAKE NEWS (close toed shoes are required for men). The second year I sauntered in wearing a Saudi Keffiyeh on my head and used my four years of Arabic training to convince the management that I was a wealthy Saudi and therefore they could not force me to remove my headdress (hats are not allowed inside the club). The third year I showed up with a fistful of hand-rolled, home-grown doobies in a suit jacket pocket.
When I got the award for "Funniest Caller" I came up to accept the certificate with one of the doobies in my mouth. As Tucker handed it over he laughed, "weed is lame!"
"I grew this and rolled it myself!" I replied.
"OK that's awesome," he laughed.
Tucker was open about his own struggle with vices in the past, at once both relatable and willing to admit how he had changed his ways. He looked me in the eye and paid attention to me while we spoke, rather than looking around the room for more important people than I. This cannot be said about the overwhelming majority of people who work in DC media or politics; they are more interested in kissing ass than hearing new ideas. Those are the people who still run cable news, and that approach to the rapidly changing world is why cable news is dead.
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