Tucker Carlson has brought light to taboo and overlooked crucial issues like systemic racism against Whites and has helped expand the Overton Window. Tucker has also helped push the conservative movement in a more populist and isolationist direction to the ire of neocons like Ben Shapiro. He is a Paleocon of the Buchananite tradition, which was a precursor to the dissident right.

Tucker Carlson has recently gone in a Christian nationalist adjacent direction and engages in kooky conspiracy theories, like much of the populist right. Tucker also covers tabloid-like topics like speculating whether Obama is gay, as well as shilling for Andrew Tate, who is a total grifter and is just gross.

While I have no issues with him interviewing Putin, it was a softball interview and he should have asked some tough questions. Also, his Russian supermarket video was cringe, even from a Russia sympathetic standpoint, and just made him look stupid and patronizing.

Tucker has gone outright creationist, denying Evolution, which I can’t take seriously. He also did a show about the attack on Christian values where he scapegoated paganism, with Reagan-era Satanic panic-type tropes. I don’t have a problem with Christians per se and am far from being an atheist, but I’m not too fond of the impact that Christian nationalist influence is having on the Right. Generally, the more intellectual and intelligent right lean secular politically. Not to mention that creationism is the foundation for the blank slatism of the Right and is a barrier to normalizing HBD. However, Tucker often jokes that he was raised Episcopalian and thus not that religious in his personal life.

While Tucker flirts with White identity politics he reverts to the “Dems are the real racist” trope or says patronizing things like I have this immigrant friend who is the most patriotic person I’ve ever met. He promotes American Nationalism while refusing to admit that America is just an economic zone at this point. He opposes anti-Whiteness as a violation of colorblindness while gatekeeping Whites from considering identity politics and tribalism for themselves, though he acknowledges that it is inevitable the way things are going. Tucker, as a GenXer, exists in this space between boomer Reagan conservatism and the millennial and zoomer dissident right, thus he sort of gets it yet is still stuck in the past and old ways of thinking.

Tucker will also fluctuate between talking about the corrupt Uni-party to keeping his audience on the GOP plantation in a similar way that Bill Maher does with the Democrats. Basically, Tucker makes it an issue about electing patriots to take back America and voting out the Rhinos and Neocons rather than forming counter-elites and alternative institutions. While pointing out liberal elite hypocrisy is fine, he spends way too much time complaining about it and hedging upon the trope as a political strategy.

Tucker’s strength is when he leans into his elite WASP persona, is honest about his privilege, and puts forth a noblesse oblige message, but is cringe when he tries too hard to be folksy. He is much more cosmopolitan, growing up wealthy in coastal California, than he lets on. Perhaps he is ashamed of his past when he was a smug establishmentarian conservative, thus overcompensates.

I used to be more of a fan of Tucker’s but I am not crazy about the direction he has gone in lately and find it hard to shill for him. The issue is not that he should avoid discussing certain issues but what he prioritizes and his overall message and branding. He has much more freedom now than he did on Fox News but is squandering an opportunity to do something radically new, different, and exceptional.

Tucker, at times, comes very close to the truth, and is still one of the best and most effective compared to other major rightwing populist figures, which shows the fundamental flaws with that movement. American rightwing populism amounts to protests and moral outrage porn while offering no clear program for change or policies to reign in the oligarchy. The populist right would be better off focusing on a handful of important issues, such as reducing immigration, freedom of association, protecting free speech, and non-interventionism while not getting too distracted by hyperbolic conspiracy theories and culture war issues.

It is easy to say that it is just conservative elites that are the problem, but it is also the demographic that the rightwing populist movement caters to. While I used to be a populist, I no longer am because I don’t think the average schlub’s opinions should dictate the culture and policy decisions. While Tucker is very intelligent, he seems to dumb down his message and espouses low-status opinions for his audience. Tucker is also an entertainer and a lot of rightwing politics amounts to entertainment.