Park MacDougald offers extended consideration to Tucker Carlson’s “contribution” to the Charlie Kirk memorial yesterday in the Scroll column “Cut Tucker loose” (behind Tablet’s paywall). He suggests that Carlson is making it a time for choosing on the right. After surveying the reaction to Carlson’s remarks — some celebrating their anti-Semitism, some decrying it — Park arrives at this conclusion:
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It’s hard to know where to begin with Carlson’s speech. It was ideological poison, for one thing. For another, it was bizarre and antisocial behavior on Carlson’s part to use his murdered friend’s memorial service to grind a private sectarian axe—and that would be true even in some alternate universe where Carlson’s grudge was entirely justified. It’s doubly bizarre and antisocial given that Kirk was, throughout his life, a major critic of antisemitism. Worse, Carlson was spitting in the face of Kirk’s widow by winking at conspiracy theories that she is being forced to dispel in a planned podcast appearance later this week.
Finally, in political terms, Carlson was abusing the trust of whoever invited him to appear on the stage alongside Trump and other senior administration officials. This is the second time in a week that Carlson has engaged in such abuse. In last Monday’s [Scroll column], we wrote about Carlson’s appearance last week on an episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” hosted by J.D. Vance, in which the former Fox Host engaged in similar provocations. We noted at the time that this struck as a serious mistake by Vance, who, by granting Carlson the platform and failing to challenge his innuendo, made himself and by extension the administration complicit in whatever Carlson was saying. Carlson is Vance’s man, after all. The two are close friends. Carlson’s son works in Vance’s office. Carlson reportedly helped Vance secure the vice presidential nomination, and Vance in turn lobbied for Carlson’s inclusion on a list of U.S. investors in a potential deal to take over TikTok. We haven’t seen any reporting on who invited Carlson to speak at Sunday’s memorial, but we somehow doubt it was the president, who derided him as “kooky Tucker Carlson” and mocked him for not having a TV show. The list of suspects is short, and Vance is at the top of it.
This is not sustainable. We can be charitable to Vance and say that maybe he is attempting to give the longest possible leash to an old friend. Or perhaps he is trying to promote conservative unity in the wake of a tragedy, which would in more normal times be an admirable goal. We can also say that this is one of Carlson’s favorite tactics: dirtying up his friends and interlocutors so that they are forced to choose between openly rebuking him, which puts them in an awkward position, and remaining silent, which makes them into his co-conspirators and protectors. It’s the sort of sociopathic behavior characteristic of addicts and criminals. But Carlson has thoroughly exhausted whatever charity has been extended to him. He regularly attacks the Trump administration—as well as Jewish, evangelical, and pro-Israel Trump supporters—and promotes the narrative that the president is compromised by Jews. He has, as a result, not only embarrassed the administration but also fractured the president’s base, elements of which are now at each other’s throats over the words of a glorified podcaster….
The point is that Carlson is not fooling anyone anymore—not those on his side and not those on ours. But without the sponsorship of senior figures in the administration, he would be a lone crank podcasting into the void. Thus far, Carlson’s sponsors have been content to ignore his relentless attacks on their colleagues, their policies, their boss, and large swathes of their base. We suspect they hope that Carlson will spontaneously come to his senses, and that the problem will somehow solve itself without them having to do anything uncomfortable.
It won’t. Indeed, all evidence thus far suggests the opposite: that the more Carlson gets away with, the worse he gets. His sponsors can own that—and everything that comes with allying with an anti-Trump subversive whose stock-in-trade is using conspiracies about the Jews to foment civil war on the right—or they can cut him loose. There are no options beyond those two. And it is Carlson, not his critics, who is forcing them to choose.
