Is Tucker Carlson a Viable Presidential Candidate in 2024?
Does Donald Trump’s ascension to the highest office in the land in 2016 obliterate any remaining entry barriers to the position? Or, does his ignominious defeat to political veteran Joe Biden this year signal that the age of celebrity politics has come to an abrupt end? What does the candidacy of hip hop and social media superstar Kanye West, the latest celebrity-turned-politician, which garnered only 60,000 votes, augur?
Fox News hosts often straddle the thin line between entertainers and political influencers. But the Carlson and Hannity are different. they wield political influence that even Joe Scarborough, also once mentioned as a potential Presidential candidate at the height of his powers during the Obama administration, never had. “Tucker will tweet or say something on the air. And two days later, it’s Donald Trump’s policy,” host of CNN’s Reliable Sources Brian Stelter told Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson on The New Abormal podcast. Such is the influence of Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson. Tucker Carlson Tonight, it should be noted, averaged 5.36 million viewers in October, giving it the highest rated monthly average viewership of any program in cable news history.
Tucker is more than just an entertainer, though many on the left consider him to be a clown. Steve Schmidt, one of the founders of The Lincoln Project (and the senior campaign strategist and advisor to the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain), recently raised the possibility that the Fox News personality, even at this early date, is the front runner. And he is not alone in that thinking. Former Congressional candidate Vernon Robinson says the 51-year old cabler will be the nominee. The New York Post mentioned the Fox host as a possible candidate, as did the UK Sun. Both publications, we cannot fail to note, are News Corp properties, as is Tucker Carlson Tonight.
Earlier in the summer Politico published a widely read story on the idea of Tucker Carlson’s candidacy. Alex Thompson wrote:
Sixteen prominent Republicans interviewed by POLITICO said there’s an emerging consensus in the GOP that the 51-year-old Carlson would be formidable if he were to run. Some strategists aligned with other potential candidates are convinced he will enter the race and detect the outlines of a stump speech in Carlson’s recent Fox monologues. Others, particularly those who know him well, are skeptical that he would leave his prime-time TV gig.
Can Carlson’s built-in audience morph into his political base? It could conceivably, if he follows Trump’s own playbook. A crowded field in 2016 helped Trump immensely, reducing debates to soundbyte platforms, and it is beginning to look like a crowded field once again in ‘24. Everyone from Marco Rubio to Ivanka Trump have been whispered about by the chattering class. And on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo all but made his interest in that race all but certain by “triggering the media,” a favorite contact sport of the Republican base. Like Trump, Carlson has decades of experience in media. As a defender of Trump on weeknights, Tucker is fluent in America First.
Finally, what about Tucker’s boss, the Capo di tutti capi of global ethno-nationalism?
“Presidents come and go,” notes Michael M. Grynbaum in The New York Times. “Rupert Murdoch remains.”
Unfortunately.
